
Class _^iJ,LiLA 
Book , • 



^m^'-.-Jd-t^i 



CDPflJIGHT DEPOSm 



By James IQendall Hosmer 



The Story of the Jews 

{In the Story of the Nations Series) 

The Last Leaf 

{Personal Reminiscences) 




(^.^Ke^Mf^^^ 



From a photograph by Sweet, Minneapolis 



The Last Leaf 

Observations, during Seventy-five Years, 

of Men and Events in America 

and Europe 



By 

James Kendall Hosmer, LL.D. 

Member of the Minneaota Historical Society, Corresponding Member of 

the Masaachosetts Historical Society and the CoioniaJ 

Society of Massachusetts 

Author of " A Short History of German Literature," " The Story o* the 

Jews," the Lives of Samuel Adams, Thomas JeSersoo, 

Sir Henry Vane, etc. 



G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York and London 

tibe Imicherbocfter press 

1912 






Copyright, igia 

BY 

JAMES KENDALL HOSMER 



Ube ftnicfiet&ocRec press* tUw JQorli 



CI.A3.30107 



FOREWORD 

STANDING on the threshold of my eightieth 
year, stumbling badly, moreover, through the 
mutiny, well justified, of a pair of worn-out eyes, 
I, a veteran maker of books, must look forward 
to the closing of an over-long series. 

I retain in my memory certain films, which 
record impressions of long ago. Can I not pos- 
sibly develop and present these film records for 
a moving picture of the men and events of an 
eventful period? 

We old story-tellers do our talking under a 
heavy handicap. Homer, long ago, found us 
garrulous, and compared us to cicadas chirping 
unprofitably in the city-gate. In the modern 
time, too, Dr. Holmes, ensconced in smug youth, 
could " sit and grin " at one of our kind as he 

" Totters o'er the ground 
With his cane. " 

He thought 

" His breeches aud all that 
Were so queer ." 

The " all that " is significant. To the callow 



iv Fore-word 

young doctor, men of our kind were throughout 
queered, and so, too, think the spruce and jaunty 
company who are shouldering us so fast out of 
the front place. In their thought we are more 
than depositors of last leaves, in fact we are last 
leaves ourselves, capable in the green possibly of 
a pleasant murmur, but in the dry with no voice 
but a rattle prophetic of winter. I hope Dr. 
Holmes lived to repent his grin. At any rate 
he lived to refute the notion that youthful fire 
and white hairs exclude each other. If we must 
totter, what ground we have to totter over, with 
two generations and more behind us! The 
ground is ours. We only have looked into the 
faces of the great actors, and have taken part 
in the epoch-making events. As I unroll my 
panorama I may totter, but I hope I shall not 
dodder. 

Eetiring, as I must soon do from my somewhat 
Satanic activity, from " going to and fro in the 
earth and walking up and down in it," I can 
claim, like my ill-reputed exemplar, to have en- 
countered some patient Jobs, servants of the 
Lord, but more who were impatient, yet not 
the less the Lord's servants, and the outward 
semblance of these I try to present. My pictures 
have to some extent been exhibited before, in the 
Atlantic Monthly, the New York Evening Post, 
and the Boston Transcript, and I am indebted 
to the courtesy of the publishers of these periodi- 
cals for permission to utilise them here. I am 



ForeAvord v 

emboldened by the favour they met to present 
them again to the public, retouched, and ex- 
panded. I attempt no elaborate characterisa- 
tion of men, or history of events or exposition 
of philosophies. My films are snap-shots, caught 
from the curbstone, from the gallery of an 
assembly, in a scholar's study, or by the light 
of a camp-tire. I have ventured to address my 
reader as friend might talk to a friend, with 
the freedom of familiar intercourse, and I hope 
that the reader may not be conscious of any 
undue intrusion of the showman as the figures 
and scenes appear. Go, little book, with this 
setting forth of what you are and aim to do. 



J. K. H. 



Minneapolis, 
October, 4, 1912. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I 

STATESMEN OF OUR CRITICAL PERIOD 

" Tippecanoe and Tyler too." Millard Fillmore. Abraham 
Lincoln at Church. Stephen A. Douglas. Daniel Webster. 
William H. Seward. Edward Everett. Robert C. Win- 
throp. Charles Sumner. John A, Andrew. . . . pp. 1-27 

CHAPTER II 

SOLDIERS I HAVE MET 

U. S. Grant. Philip H. Sheridan. George G. Meade. 
W. T. Sherman. Jacob D. Cox. N. P. Banks. B. F. 
Butler. John Pope. Henry W. Slocum. O. 0. Howard. 
Rufus Saxton. James H. Wilson. T. W. Sherman. Horatio 
G. Wright. Isaac I. Stevens. Harvard Soldiers. W. F. 
Bartlett. Charles R. Lowell. Francis C. Barlow, pp. 28-66 

CHAPTER III 

HORACE MANN AND ANTIOCH COLLEGE 

Horace Mann. " The New Wrinkle at Sweetbrier." 
Dramatics in the Schools of Germany, of France, of 
England, at Antioch College pp. 67-100 

CHAPTER IV 

THE GIANT IN THE SPIKED HELMET 

Prussia in 1870. Militarism in the Schools, in the Uni- 
versities, in the Home, in the Sepulchre. The Hohenzollern 
Lineage pp. 108-136 



viii Contents 

CHAPTER V 

A student's experience in the FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR 

Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse. The Emperor Frederick. 
Wilhelm 11. Francis Joseph of Austria. King Ludwig of 
Bavaria. Munich in War-time. A Deserted Switzerland. 
France in Arms. Paris on the Verge of the Siege. 

pp. 137-160 

CHAPTER VI 

AMERICAN HISTORIANS 

George Bancroft. Justin Winsor. John Fiske. pp. 161-178 
CHAPTER VII 

ENGLISH AND GERMAN HISTORIANS 

Sir Richard Garnett. S. R. Gardiner. E. A. Freeman. 
Goldwin Smith. James Bryce. The House of Commons. 
Lord Randolph Churchill and W. E. Gladstone as Makers 
of History. Von Treitschke. Ernst Curtius. Leopold von 
Ranke. Theodor Mommsen. Lepsius. Hermann Grimm. 

pp. 179-215 

CHAPTER VIII 

POETS AND PROPHETS 

Henry W. Longfellow. Oliver Wendell Holmes. James 
Russell Lowell. The Town of Concord. Henry D. Thoreau. 
Louisa M. Alcott. Nathaniel Hawthorne. Ralph Waldo 
Emerson. Phillips Brooks pp. 216-262 

CHAPTER IX 

MEN OF SCIENCE 

German Scientists : Kirchoff , the Physicist. Bunsen, the 
Chemist. Helmholtz. American Scientists: Simon New- 
comb, Asa Gray, Louis Agassiz, Alexander Agassiz. 

pp. 263-295 



Contents ix 

CHAPTER X 

AT HAPHAZARD 

William Grey, Ninth Earl of Stamford. The Franciscan 
of Salzburg. The Berlin Dancer. Visits to Old Battle- 
fields. Eupeptic Musings pp. 296-334 

Index pp. 335-340 



The Last Leaf 



CHAPTER I 

STATESMEN OF OUR CRITICAL PERIOD 

I CAME to consciousness in the then small 
to^Ti of Buffalo in western New York, 
whither, in Andrew Jackson's day, our house- 
hold gods and goods were conveyed from Massa- 
chusetts for the most part by the Erie Canal, 
the dizzy rate of four miles an hour not taking 
away my baby breath. Speaking of men and 
affairs of state, as I shall do in this opening 
paper, I felt my earliest political thrill in 1840. 
I have a distinct vision, the small boy's point 
of view being not much above the sidewalk, of 
the striding legs in long processions, of wide- 
open, clamorous mouths above, and over all of 
the flutter of tassels and banners. Then began 
my knowledge of log-cabins, coon-skins, and of the 
name hard cider, the thump of drums, the crash 
of brass-bands, cockades, and torch-lights. My 
powers as a singer, always modest, I first exer- 



2 XHe Last Leaf 

cised on " For Tippecanoe and Tyler too," whicli 
still obtrudes too obstinately upon my tym- 
panum, though much fine harmony heard since 
in cathedrals and the high shrines of music is 
quite powerless now to make that organ vibrate. 
Four years later, my emerging voice did better 
justice to " Harry Clay of Old Kentucky," and 
my early teens found me in an environment that 
quickened prematurely my interest in public 
affairs. My father, the pioneer apostle of an 
unpopular faith, ministered in a small church 
of brick faced with stone to a congregation 
which, though few in numbers, contained some 
remarkable people. Millard Fillmore and his 
partner, Nathan K. Hall, soon to be Postmaster- 
General, were of his fold, together with Hiram 
Barton, the city's mayor, and other figures 
locally noteworthy. Fillmore was only an ac- 
cidental President, dominated, no doubt, and 
dwarfed in the perspective by greater men, 
while the part he played in a great crisis 
brought upon him obloquy with many good peo- 
ple. " Say what you will about Fillmore," said 
a fellow-totterer to me the other day, adjusting 
his " store " teeth for an emphatic declaration, 
" by signing the Fugitive Slave Bill he saved 
the country. That act postponed the Civil War 
ten years. Had it come in 1850, as it assuredly 
would but for that scratch of Fillmore's pen, 
the Union would have gone by the board. The 
decade that followed greatly increased the rela- 



Millard Fillmore 3 

tive strength of the North. A vast immigration 
poured in which almost universally came to 
stand for the Union. Moreover the expanding 
West, whose natural outlet until then had been 
down the Mississippi to the South, became now 
linked to the East by great lines of railroad, 
and West and East entered into such a new 
bond of sympathy that there was nothing for 
it, in a time of trial, but to stand together. As 
it was, it was only by the narrowest margin 
that the Union weathered the storm. Had it 
come ten years earlier, wreck would have 
been inevitable, and it is to Fillmore's signa- 
ture that we owe that blessed postponement." 
As the old man spoke, I had a vision of the 
grave, troubled face of my father as he told us 
once of a talk he had just had with Mr. Fill- 
more. The relations of the pastor and the 
parishioner, always cordial, had become more 
than ever friendly through an incident credit- 
able to both. Mr. Fillmore had good-naturedly 
offered my father a chaplaincy in the Navy, a 
post with a comfortable salary, which he might 
easily hold, taking now and then a pleasant sea- 
cruise with light duties, or indeed not leaving 
home at all, by occasional trips and visits to the 
one man-of-war which the Government main- 
tained on the Great Lakes. To an impecunious 
minister, with a large family to educate, it was a 
tempting offer. But my father in those days 
was a peace-man, and he was also disinclined to 



4 THe Last Leaf 

nibble at the public crib while rendering no 
adequate service. He declined the appointment, 
a course much censured. " The fool parson, to 
let such a chance go ! " Mr. Fillmore admired 
it and their friendship became heartier than 
ever. In the interview, my father had asked his 
friend to explain his course on the Fugitive 
Slave Law, an act involving suffering for so 
many, and no doubt took on a tone of remon- 
strance. He told us the President raised his 
hands in vehement appeal. He had only a 
choice between terrible evils — to inflict suffering 
which he hoped might be temporary, or to pre- 
cipitate an era of bloodshed with the destruction 
of the country as a probable result. He did not 
do evil that good might come, but of two 
imminent evils he had, as he believed, chosen 
the lesser. 

Fillmore lives in my memory a stately, massive 
presence, with hair growing grey and kindly 
blue eyes looking down upon the little boy with 
a pleasant greeting. His wife was gentle and 
unassuming. His daughter Abby matured into 
much beauty and grace, and her sudden death, 
by cholera, in the bloom of young womanhood 
cast a shadow on the nation. They were homely 
folk, thrust up suddenly into high position, but 
it did not turn their heads. In their lives they 
were plainly sweet and honest. No taint of 
corruption attaches to Fillmore in either his 
private or public career. He was my father's 



^braHaxn Lrincoln 5 

friend. I think he meant well, and am glad that 
our most authoritative historian of the period, 
Rhodes, can say that he discharged the duties 
of his high office " with ability and honour." 

When in February, 1861, Abraham Lincoln, on 
his way to Washington, arrived in Buffalo 
Saturday night and it became known he would 
spend Sunday, the town was alive with curiosity 
as to where he would go to church. Mr. Lin- 
coln was Mr. Fillmore's guest. They had known 
each other well in Congress — Fillmore a veteran 
at the head of the Committee of Ways and 
Means, Lincoln then quite unknown, serving his 
only term. Both were Whigs of the old school, 
in close contact and I suppose not afterwards 
far apart. Lincoln was prepared to execute the 
Fugitive Slave Law, while Fillmore was devoted 
to the Union, and probably would have admitted 
at the end that Lincoln's course throughout was 
good. My father's church was looked on some- 
what askance. " It 's lucky," said a parishioner 
once, " that it has a stone face." Would Lin- 
coln go to the Unitarian church? Promptly at 
service-time Mr. Fillmore appeared with his 
guest, the two historic figures side by side in 
the pew. Tw^o or three rows intervened between 
it and that in which sat my mother and our 
household. I beheld the scene only through the 
eyes of my kindred, for by that time I had 
flown the nest. But I may be pardoned for 
noting here an interesting spectacle. As they 



6 XHe Last Leaf 

stood during the hyiniis, the contrast wras pic- 
niresqne. Both men had risen from the rudest 
conditions through much earlv hardship. Fill- 
more had been rocked in a sap-trough in a log- 
cabin scarcely better than Lincoln's early 
shelter, and the two might perhaps have played 
an even match at splitting rails. Fillmore, 
however, strangely adaptive, had taken on a 
marked grace of manner, his fine stature and 
mien carrying a dignified courtliness which is 
said to have won him a handsome compliment 
from Queen Victoria — a gentleman rotund, well- 
groomed, c-onspicuously elegant. Shoulder to 
shoulder with him rose the queer, raw-boned, 
ramshackle frame of the Illinoisan, draped in 
the artless handiwork of a prairie tailor, sur- 
mounted by the rugged, homely fac-e. The ser- 
Tiee, which the new auditor followed reverently, 
being finished, the minister, leaving the pulpit, 
gave Lincoln Grod-speed — ^and so he passed on to 
his greatness. My mother, sister, and brothers 
— the Toung^t of whom before two years were 
gone was to fill a soldier's grave — stood close 
at hand. 

I once saw Stephen A- Douglas, the man who 
was p»bap6 more el«>sely associated than any 
otlier with the fame of Lincoln, for he was the 
knman obstacle by orereoming whom Lincoln 
{voTed kis fitaess for the sopseme places Douglas 
was a mxa marrelloiisij strong. Bliodes declares 
it would be hard to set bounds to his ability. I 



S^cptff^cn .^V. 



sav km m 185A, whtm ht ^^ ---. 
old, fmgt bfgJMmg to sake i 
aB iM|Kcii> of power. FlItaKK^ 
tknN^ Tmj%orK deatk, kt JML P 
was wtatrfiig kis fint visit to kio I 
cktaftMM, witk McadHS of kw Galp 
Mgrnn* of kio partx. j 
to ke <rf tke eoHpoBT I w«_», 
vas an ardent Jacfaoniaa DeBOcrat, kaDi 
ke was on tke fJaifo in i keioiv tke nwllilmli, 
and If a box ai sixfeeoy watdked kim imimi^I t, 
for be was jonng as coanpared witk tke ^rer 
keads abont kin. EUs ni^ie^ as ke stood np 
to speak, is rctj dear to me exea now — a faee 
strong-featared and rad^ witk TJ^^^wr bcnentk 
ff»dhead wkoce tkatiA kad tke Unck- 
and Inxmiance oi lontk. EBs trank wns 
disptopcwtKniatelT ]ar«e, carried en le^ ^nr^ 
enongb bnt noticeabfy short. The wits nsed to 
describe him as the statesman ^witk coat-tails 
Tenr near the ground.*' It is worth while to 
r^nai^ on this f^rsical peenliaritT b eea n se it 
was the direct opposite of Lincoln's config:nra- 
tion. He, while comparatiTelr shoot-bodied, had, 
as all the world knows, an ahnomal l^igtk of 
limb, a fact which I sof^Mise will aecovnt for 
mnch of his nngainly mann»>. In an o^dinaij 
chair he was ondoabtedlT uncomfortable, and 
hoice his familiar auimde with his feet on the 
Table or oxer the mantelpiece. The two fong^t 
each oth» Ions and stemlr on those memwmUs 



8 TKe Last Leaf 

platforms in Illinois in 1858, and in their 
physique there must have been, as they stood 
side by side, a grotesque parody of their intel- 
lectual want of harmony. Douglas's usual 
soubriquet was " the little giant," and it fitted 
well — a man of stalwart proportions oddly 
" sawed off." His voice was vibrant and sono- 
rous, his mien compelling. It was no great 
speech, a few sentences of compliment to the city 
and of good-natured banter of the political foes 
among whom he found himself; but it was ex 
pede Herculem, a leader red-blooded to the 
finger-tips. I treasure the memory of this brief 
touch into which I once came with Douglas for 
I have come to think more kindly of him as he 
has receded. Not a few will now admit that, 
taken generally, his doctrine of " squatter 
sovereignty " was right. Congress ought not to 
have power to fix a status for people of future 
generations. If a status so fixed becomes re- 
pugnant it will be repudiated, and rightfully. 
Douglas was certainly cool over the woes of the 
blacks; but he refused, it is said, to grow rich, 
when the opportunity offered, from the owner- 
ship of slaves or from the proceeds of their 
sale. His rally to the side of Lincoln at last 
was finely magnanimous and it was a pleasant 
scene, at the inauguration of March 4, 1861, 
when Douglas sat close by holding Lincoln's hat. 
There was an interview between the two men 
behind closed doors, on the night the news of 



Daniel "Webster 9 

Sumter came, of which one would like to have 
a report. Lincoln came out from it to issue, 
through the Associated Press, his call for troops, 
and Douglas to send by the same channel the 
appeal to his followers to stand by the Govern- 
ment. What could the administration have done 
without the faithful arms and hearts of the War 
Democrats? And what other voice but that of 
Douglas could have rallied them to its support? 
Had he lived it seems inevitable that the two 
so long rivals w^ould have been close friends — 
that Douglas would have been in Lincoln's 
Cabinet, perhaps in Stanton's place. This, how- 
ever, is not a memory but a might-have-been^ 
and those are barred out in this Last Leaf. 

Daniel Webster came home to die in 1852. He 
was plainly failing fast, but the State for which 
he stood hoped for the best, and arranged that he 
should speak, as so often before, in Faneuil Hall. 
As I walked in from Harvard College, over the 
long " caterpillar bridge " through Cambridge 
Street and Dock Square, my freshman mind was 
greatly perplexed. My mother's family were 
perfervid Abolitionists, accepting the extremes t 
utterances of Garrison and Wendell Phillips. I 
was now in that environment, and felt strong 
impress from the power and sincerity of the 
anti-slavery leaders. Fillmore and his Post- 
master-General, N. K. Hall, were old family 
friends. We children had chummed with their 



10 The Last Leaf 

children. Their kindly, honest faces were 
among the best known to us in the circle of 
our elders. I had learned to respect no men 
more. I was about to behold Webster, Fill- 
more's chief secretary and counsellor. On the 
one hand he was much denounced, on the other 
adored, in each case with fiery vehemence, and 
in my little world the contrasting passions 
were wildly ablaze. In the mass that crowded 
Faneuil Hall we waited long, an interval partly 
filled by the eccentric and eloquent Father 
Taylor, the seamen's preacher, whom the crowd 
espied in the gallery and summoned clamor- 
ously. My mood was serious, and it jarred 
upon me when a classmate, building on current 
rumours, speculated irreverently as to the prob- 
able contents of the pitcher on Mr. Webster's 
desk. He came at last, tumultuously accom- 
panied and received, and advanced to the front, 
his large frame, if I remember right, dressed 
in the blue coat with brass buttons and buff 
vest usual to him on public occasions, which 
hung loosely about the attenuated limbs and 
body. The face had all the majesty I expected, 
the dome above, the deep eyes looking from the 
caverns, the strong nose and chin, but it was 
the front of a dying lion. His colour was 
heavily sallow, and he walked with a slow, un- 
certain step. His low, deep intonations con- 
veyed a solemn suggestion of the sepulchre. His 
speech was brief, a recognition of the honour 



Daniel "Webster il 

shown him, an expression of his belief that the 
policy he had advocated and followed was neces- 
sary to the country's preservation. Then he 
passed out to Marshfield and the death-bed. 
What he said was not much, but it made a 
strange impression of power, and here I am 
minded to tell an ancient story. Sixty years 
ago, when I was ensconced in my smug youth, 
and could " sit and grin," like young Dr. Holmes, 
at the queernesses of the last leaves of those 
days, I heard a totterer whose ground was the 
early decades of the last century, chirp as 
follows : 

" This Daniel Webster of yours ! Why, I can 
remember when he had a hard push to have his 
ability acknowledged. We used to aver that he 
never said anything, and that it was only his 
big way that carried the crowd. I have in mind 
an old-time report of one of his deliverances: 
^ Mr. Chairman (applause), I did not graduate 
at this university [greater applause), at this 
college {tumultuous applause), I graduated at 
another college (wild cheering with hats thrown 
in the air), I graduated at a college of my 
native State {convulsions of enthusiasm, during 
which the police spread mattresses to catch those 
who leaped from the windows).^ ^^ 

That day in Faneuil Hall I felt his " big way " 
and it overpowered, though the sentences were 
really few and commonplace. What must he 
have been in his prime! What sentences in the 



12 TKe Last Leaf 

whole history of oratory have more swayed men 
than those he uttered ! I recall that in 1861 we 
young men of the ISTorth did not much argue 
the question of the right of secession. The Con- 
stitution was obscure about it, and one easily 
became befogged if he sought to weigh the right 
and the wrong of it. But Webster had replied 
to Hayne. Those were the days when school- 
boys " spoke pieces," and in thousands of school- 
houses the favourite piece was his matchless 
peroration. From its opening, " When my eyes 
shall be turned to behold for the last time the 
sun in the heavens," to the final outburst, 
" Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and 
inseparable ! " it was all as familiar to us as 
the sentences of the Lord's Prayer, and scarcely 
less consecrated. No logical unravelling of the 
tangle, but that burning expression of devotion 
to the Union, lay beliind the enthusiasm with 
which we sprang to arms. The ghost of Webster 
hovered in the battle-smoke, and it was his call 
more than any other that rallied and kept us 
at the firing-line. 

I think my mother told me once that on the 
canal-boat as we went West in the thirties, we 
had Webster for a time as a fellow-passenger, 
who good-naturedly patted the heads of the two 
little boys who then made up her brood. I wish 
I could be sure that the hand of Webster had 
once rested on my head. His early utterances 
as to slavery are warm with humane feeling. I 



"William H. Se-ward 13 

have come to feel that his humanity did not 
cool, but he grew into the belief that agitation 
at the time would make sure the destruction of 
the country, in his eyes the supreme calamity. 
The injustice, hoary from antiquity, not recog- 
nised as injustice until within a generation or 
two, might wait a generation or two longer be- 
fore we dealt with it. Let the evil be endured 
a while that the greater evil might not come. 
I neither defend nor denounce him. I am now 
only remembering; and what a stately and 
solemn image it is to remember! 

William H. Seward, unlike Webster, had the 
handicap of an unimpressive exterior, nor had 
his voice the profound and conquering note 
which is so potent an ally of the mind in sub- 
duing men. I heard Seward's oration at Ply- 
mouth in 1855, a worthy effort which may be 
read in his works, but I do better here to pick 
up only the straws, not meddling with the heavy- 
garnered wheat. I recall an inconspicuous figure, 
of ordinary stature, and a face whose marked 
feature was the large nose (Emerson called it 
"corvine"), but that, as some one has said, is 
the hook which nature makes salient in the case 
of men whom fortune is to drag forward into 
leadership. He spoke in the pulpit of my grand- 
father, who at the time had been for nearly sixty 
years minister of the old Pilgrim parish. From 
that coign of vantage, my faithful grandsire had 



14 TKe Last Leaf 

no doubt smoked out many a sinner, and had 
not been sparing of tlie due polemic fulminations 
in times of controversy. The old theology, too, 
had undergone at his hands faithful fumigation 
to make it sanitary for the modern generations. 
From one kind of smoke, however, that venerable 
pulpit had been free until the hour of Seward's 
arrival. It arched my eyebrows well when 1 
saw him at the end of his address light a cigar 
in the very shrine, a burnt-offering, in my good 
grandfather's eyes certainly, more fitting for 
altars satanic. My grandfather promptly called 
him down, great man though he was, a rub which 
the statesman received from the white-haired 
minister, good-naturedly postponing his smoke. 
But Seward rode rough-shod too often over con- 
ventions, and sometimes over real proprieties. 
In an over-convivial frame once, his tongue, 
loosened by champagne, nearly wagged us into 
international complications, and there is a war- 
time anecdote, which I have never seen in print 
and I believe is unhackneyed, which casts a 
light. A general of the army, talking with Lin- 
coln and the Cabinet, did not spare his oaths. 
"What church do you attend?" interposed the 
President at last, stroking his chin in his inno- 
cent way. Confused at an inquiry so foreign 
to tlie topic under discussion, the soldier replied 
he did not attend much of any church himself, 
but his folks were Methodists. " How odd ! " said 
Lincoln, " I thought you were an Episcopalian. 



"William H. Se-ward 15 

You swear just like Seward, and Seward is an 
Episcopalian." 

But I should be sorry to believe there was 
any trouble with Seward but a surface blemish. 
Though in '61 he advocated a foreign war as a 
means for bringing together North and South, 
and desired to shelve practically Lincoln while 
he himself stood at the front to manage the tur- 
moil, he made no more mistakes than statesmen 
in general. He had been powerful for good be- 
fore the war, and during its course, with what 
virile stiffness of the upper lip did he face and 
foil the frowning foreign world! He had the 
insight and candour to do full justice at last 
to Lincoln, whom at first he depreciated. Then 
the purchase of Alaska ! Writing as I do on 
the western coast I am perhaps affected by the 
glamour of that marvellous land. When news 
of the bargain came in the seventies, the scorners 
sang: 

" Hear it all ye polar bears, 
Waltz around the pole in pairs. 
All ye icebergs make salaam, 
You belong to Uncle Sam. 
Lo, upon the snow too plain 
Falls his dark tobacco stain." 

We thought that very funny and very apt, — 
but now! I am glad I have his image vivid, 
in the pulpit beside my grandfather scratching 
a match for a too careless cigar. Between 



i6 THe Last Leaf 

smokes he had done, and was still to do, some 
fine things. 

In those days, Edward Everett and Robert C. 
Winthrop were often under my immature gaze. 
Men much alike in views, endowments, and 
accomplishments, tliey had played out their parts 
in public life and had been consigned to their 
Boston shelf. In the perspective they are statu- 
ettes rather than statues, of Parian spotless- 
ness, ribboned and gilt-edged through an elegant 
culture, well appointed according to the best 
taste, companion Sevres pieces, highly orna- 
mental, and effectually shelved. By the side of 
the robust protagonists of those stormy years 
they stand as figurines, not figures, and yet it 
was rather through their fate than through 
their fault perhaps that they are what they are 
in our Pantheon. They were not at all with- 
out virile quality. Everett bore himself w^ell in 
some rough Senatorial debates, and Winthrop, 
as Speaker of the House at Washington, was 
in stormy times an able and respected officer. 
But coarse contacts jarred upon their refine- 
ment; and when, like the public men in general 
who saw in postponement of the slavery agita- 
tion the wiser course, they were retired from 
the front, it is easy to see why the world judged 
them as it did. Everett's son, Mr. Sidney 
Everett, at one time Assistant Secretary of 
State, was my classmate, and honoured me once 



Erverett and W^intHrop 17 

with a request to edit his father's works. I 
declined the task, but not from the feeling that 
the task was not worth doing. Everett had the 
idea that the armed rush of the North and South 
against each other might be stayed even at the 
last, by reviving in them the veneration for 
Washington, a sentiment shared by both. The 
delivery of his oration on Washington as a 
means to that end was well meant, but pathetic 
in its complete futility to accomplish such a pur- 
pose. So small a spill of oil upon a sea so 
raging! He was a master of beautiful periods, 
and I desire here to record my testimony that 
he also possessed a power for off-hand speech. 
The tradition is that his utterances were all 
elaborately studied, down to the gestures and 
the play of the features. I have heard him talk 
on the spur of the moment, starting out from 
an incident close at hand and touching effectively 
upon circumstances that arose as he proceeded. 

Of the two men, often seen side by side, so 
similar in tastes, education, and character, both 
for the same cause ostracised from public life 
by their commonwealth, a repugnance to reform 
which scouted all counting of costs, Winthrop 
impressed me in my young days as being the 
abler. His public career closed early, but he 
had time to show he could be vigorous and finely 
eloquent. I remember him most vividly as I 
saw him presiding at a Commencement dinner, 
a function which he discharged with extraor- 



i8 THe Last Leaf 

dinary felicity. He had an alertness, as lie 
stood lithe and graceful, derived perhaps from 
his strain of Huguenot blood. His wit was ex- 
celling, his learning comprehensive and well in 
hand. He was no more weighed down by his 
erudition than was David by his sling. En- 
comium, challenge, repartee, — all were quick and 
happy, and from time to time in soberer vein 
he passed over without shock into befitting dig- 
nity. I have sat at many a banquet, but for 
me that ruling of the feast by Winthrop is the 
masterpiece in that kind. He lived long after 
retiring from politics, the main stay of causes 
charitable, educational, and for civic betterment. 
My memory is enriched by the image of him 
which it holds. 

Sixty years ago, one met, under the elms of 
the streets of Cambridge, two men who plainly 
were close friends: one of moderate height, well 
groomed in those days almost to the point of 
being dapper, very courteous, bowing low to 
every student he met, Henry W. Longfellow. 
Of him I shall have something to say later on. 
The other was a man of unusual stature and 
stalwart frame, with a face and head of marked 
power. His rich brown hair lay in heavy locks; 
the features were patrician. He would have 
been handsome but for an hauteur about the eyes 
not quite agreeable. His presence was com- 
manding, not genial. It was Charles Sumner, 



CKarles Sumner 19 

I often encountered the two men in those days, 
receiving regularly the poet's sunny recognition 
and the statesman's rather unsympathetic stare. 
Both men were overwhelmingly famous, but, 
touched simultaneously by warmth and frost, 
I, a shy youngster, could keep my balance in 
their presence. Sumner in those years was the 
especial hete noire of the South and the con- 
servative North, and the idol of the radicals — 
at once the most banned and the most blessed 
of men. I had, besides, a personal reason for 
looking upon him with interest. He was a man 
with whom my father had once had a sharp 
difference, and I wondered, as I watched the 
stride of the stately Senator down the street, 
if he remembered, as my father did, that dif- 
ference of twenty-five years before. 

My father, in the late twenties a divinity 
student at Harvard, was a proctor, living in an 
entry of Stoughton Hall, for the good order of 
which he was expected to care. The only man 
he ever reported was Charles Sumner, and this 
was my father's story. 

Sumner, an undergraduate, though still a boy, 
had nearly attained his full stature and weight. 
He was athletic in his tastes, and given to riding 
the velocipede of those days, a heavy, bone- 
breaking machine, moved not by pedals but by 
thrusting the feet against the ground. This 
Sumner kept in his room, carrying it painfully 
up the stairs, and practised on it with the re- 



20 XKe Last Leaf 

suit, his size and energy being so unusual, that 
the building, solid as it was, was fairly shaken, 
to the detriment of plaster and woodwork, and 
the complete wreck of the proper quiet of the 
place. My father remonstrated mildly, but with- 
out" effect. A second more emphatic remon- 
strance was still without effect, whereupon came 
an ultimatum. If the disturbance continued, 
the offender would be reported to the college 
authorities. 

The bone-breaker crashed on and the stroke 
fell. Sumner was called up before President 
Kirkland and received a reprimand. He came 
from the faculty-room to the proctor's apart- 
ment in a very bojdsh fit of tears, complaining 
between sobs that he was the victim of in- 
justice, and upbraiding the proctor. My father 
was short with him; he had brought it upon 
himself, the penalty was only reasonable, and 
it would be manly for him to take it good- 
naturedly. Long afterward, when Sumner rose 
into great fame, my father remembered the 
incident perhaps too vividly. 

My curiosity as to whether Mr. Sumner had 
any rankling in his heart from that old dif- 
ference was at length gratified. The years 
passed, the assault in the Senate Chamber by 
Brooks roused the whole country; then came the 
time of slow recovery. Sumner had come back 
from the hands of Dr. Brown-S^quard at Paris 
to Boston, and was mustering strength to re- 



CKarles Svimner 21 

sume his great place. Calling one day on a 
friend in Somerset Street, I found a visitor in 
the parlour, a powerful man weighed down by 
physical disability, whom I recognised as the 
sufferer whose name at the moment was upper- 
most in millions of hearts. 

As he heard my name in the introduction 
which followed my entrance, he said quickly, 
while shaking my hand, " I wonder if you are 
the son of the man who reported me in col- 
lege." The tone was not quite genial. The old 
difference was not quite effaced. I told him as 
sturdily as I could that I was the son of his 
old proctor and that I had often heard my 
father tell the story. He said plainly he thought 
it unnecessary and unfair, and that that was 
the only time since his childhood when he had 
received a formal censure. Long after, he re- 
ceived censure from the Massachusetts Legisla- 
ture for an act greatly to his credit, the sug- 
gestion that the captured battle-flags should be 
returned to the Southern regiments from which 
they had been taken. 

But it was only a momentary flash. He settled 
back into the easy-chair with invalid languor, 
and began to tell me good-naturedly about his 
old velocipede, describing its construction, and 
the feats he had been able to perform on it, 
clumsy though it was. He could keep up with 
a fast horse in riding into Boston, but at the 
cost of a good pair of shoes. The contrivance 



C2 TKe Last Leaf 

supported the weight of the body, which rolled 
forward on the wheels, leaving the legs free to 
speed the machine by alternate rapid kicks. 
From that he branched off into college athletics 
of his day in a pleasant fashion, and at the end 
of the not short interview I felt I had enjoyed 
a great privilege. 

Another contact with Charles Sumner was a 
rather memorable one. We were in the second 
year of the Civil War. He was in his high 
place. Chairman of the Committee on Foreign 
Affairs in the Senate, a main pillar of the 
Northern cause. I meantime had been or- 
dained as minister of a parish in the Connecti- 
cut valley, and was a zealous upholder of the 
cause of the Union. John A. Andrew was Gov- 
ernor of Massachusetts. I had come to know 
him through having preached in the church at 
Hingham with which he was connected. He was 
superintendent of the Sunday-school, and had 
introduced me once for an address to his charge. 
W^e were theologically in sympathy, but for me 
it was a closer bond that he was the great war 
Governor. 

At an Amherst commencement we had talked 
about recruiting in the Connecticut valley, and 
he had impressed me much. Short in stature, 
square, well-set in frame, he had a strong head 
and face. His colour was white and pink al- 
most like that of a boy, and the resolute blue 
eyes looked out from under an abundant mat 



JoKn A.. Andrew Q$ 

of light curling hair that confirmed the impres- 
sion he made of youth. ISTot many months be- 
fore, he had been the target of much ridicule, 
being held over-anxious about a coming storm. 
He had bought three thousand overcoats for the 
militia, and otherwise busied himself to have 
soldiers ready. He was " our merry Andrew." 
But the Massachusetts Sixth had been first on 
the ground at Washington, with many more 
close behind, and the Governor had had splendid 
vindication. 

Early in September, 1862, I went to Boston 
with a deputation of selectmen from four towns 
of the Connecticut valley. They had an errand, 
and my function was, as an acquaintance of the 
Governor, to introduce them. Little we knew of 
what had just happened in Virginia, the dread- 
ful second Bull Run campaign, with the driving 
in upon Washington of the routed Pope, and the 
pending invasion of Maryland. The despatches, 
while not concealing disappointment, told an 
over-flattering tale. More troops were wanted 
for a si)eedy finishing of the war, which we 
fondly believed was, in spite of all, nearing its 
end. Our errand was to ask that in a regiment 
about to be raised in two western counties the 
men might have the privilege of electing the 
officers, a pernicious practice which had been 
in vogue, and always done much harm. But in 
those days our eyes were not open. 

Entering the Governor's room in the State 



34 THe Last Leaf 

House with my farmer selectmen, I found it 
densely thronged. Among the civilians were 
many uniforms, and men of note in the field and 
out stood there in waiting. Charles Sumner 
presently entered the room, dominating the com- 
pany by his commanding presence, that day 
apparently in full vigour, alert, forceful, with 
a step before which the crowd gave way, his mas- 
terfulness fully recognised and acknowledged. 
He took his seat with the air of a prince of 
the blood at the table, close at hand to the Chief 
Magistrate. 

Naturally abashed, but feeling I was in for 
a task which must be pushed through, I made 
my way to the other elbow of the Governor, who, 
looking up from his documents, recognised me 
politely and asked what I wanted. I stated our 
case, that a deputation from Franklin and 
Hampshire counties desired the privilege for the 
men of the new regiment about to be raised to 
elect their own officers, and not be commanded 
by men whom they did not know. 

" Where are your selectmen ? " said Governor 
Andrew, rising and pushing back his chair with 
an energy which I thought ominous. My com- 
panions had taken up a modest position in a 
far corner. When I pointed them out, the Gov- 
ernor made no pause, but proceeded to pour upon 
them and me a torrent of impassioned words. 
He said that we were making trouble, that the 
country was in peril, and that while he was 



JoHn A. Andre-w 25 

trying to send every available man to the front 
in condition to do effective work he was em- 
barrassed at home by petty interference with 
his efforts. " I have at hand soldiers who have 
proved themselves brave in action, have been 
baptised in blood and fire. They are fit through 
character and experience to be leaders, and yet 
I cannot give them commissions because I am 
blocked by this small and unworthy spirit of 
hindrance." 

For some minutes the warm outburst went on. 
The white, beardless face flushed up under the 
curls, and his hands waved in rapid gesture. 
" A capital speech, your Excellency," cried out 
Sumner, " a most capital speech ! " and he led 
the way in a peal of applause in which the crowd 
in the chamber universally joined, and which 
must have rung across Beacon Street to the 
Common far away. My feeble finger had 
touched the button which brought this unex- 
pected downpour, and for the moment I was 
unpleasantly in the limelight. 

" Now introduce me to your selectmen," said 
Governor Andrew, stepping to my side. I led 
the way to the corner to which the delega- 
tion had retreated, and presented my friends in 
turn. His manner changed. He was polite and 
friendly, and when, after a hand-shaking, he 
went back to his table, we felt we had not under- 
stood the situation and that our petition should 
have been withheld. For my part, I enlisted at 



26 XHe Last Leaf 

once as a private and went into a strenuous 
campaign. 

Sumner was intrepid, Iiigh-purposed, and ac- 
complished, but what is the world saying now 
of his judgment? His recent friendly but dis- 
criminating biographer, Prof. George H. Haynes, 
declares that even in matters of taste he was at 
fault. The paintings he thought masterpieces, 
his gift to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, are 
for the most part consigned to the lumber-room. 
In sculpture his judgment was not better. As 
to literary art, his writing was ponderous and 
over-weighted with far-fetched allusion. The 
world felt horror at the attack of Brooks, but 
the whole literature of invective contains nothing 
more offensive than the language of Sumner 
which provoked it and which he lavished right 
and left upon opponents who were sometimes 
honourable. It was in the worst of taste. 

In great affairs his service was certainly 
large. Perhaps he was at his highest in the 
settlement of the Trent ajfair, but his course 
in general in guiding our foreign relations was 
able and useful. He put his hand to much re- 
construction of ideas and institutions. Often he 
made, but too often he marred. He suffered 
sadly from the lack of a sense of humour. 
" What does Lincoln mean? " he would blankly 
exclaim, impervious alike to the drollery and to 
the keen prod concealed within it. In his fan- 
cied superiority he sought to patronise and 



CKarles Svimner 27 

dominate the rude Illinoisian. The case is 
pathetic. The width and the depth of the 
chasm which separates the two men in the 
regard of the American people! 



CHAPTER II 

SOLDIERS I HAVE MET 

IN speaking of soldiers I shall do better to pay 
slight attention to the men of chief import- 
ance; for them the trumpets have sounded 
sufficiently and I came into personal contact 
with only one or two. Grant, I saw once, after 
he was Lieutenant-General, on the platform of 
a railroad station submitting stoically to the 
compliments of a lively crowd of women. Once 
again I saw him, in academic surroundings, 
sturdy and impassive, an incongruous element 
among the caps and gowns; but it was among 
such men that he won what is to my mind 
one of his greatest victories. What triumph of 
Grant's was greater than his subjugation of 
Matthew Arnold! I rode once on the railroad- 
train for some hours immediately behind Sheri- 
dan, and had a good chance to study the sinewy 
little man in his trim uniform which showed 
every movement of his muscles. Though the 
ride was hot and monotonous I was impressed 
with his vitality. He seemed to have eyes all 
around his head. The man was in repose, but 

28 



SHeridan and Meade 29 

it was the repose of a leopard ; at a sudden call, 
every fibre would evidently become tense, the 
servant of a nimble brain, and an instant pounce 
upon any opposition could be depended upon. 
What a pity, I found myself thinking, that the 
fellow has no longer a chance for his live energy 
(the war was then well over), and I had to 
check an incipient wish that a turmoil might 
arise that would again give a proper scope to 
his soldierly force. Happily there was no longer 
need for such service, but I feel that Sheridan 
was really more than a good sword. One finds 
in his memoirs unexpected outbursts of fancy 
and high sentiment, and he could admire the 
fine heroism of a character like Charles Russell 
Lowell. It is fair to judge a man by what he 
admires. 

At the Harvard commemoration of 1865, 
standing under the archway at the northern 
end of Goi;e Hall, I encountered the thin, 
plainly clad figure of Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
I was in soldier's dress and as he gave me a 
nod of recognition he said, looking at my 
chevrons, very simply but with feeling, " This 
day belongs to you.' ' Passing around then to the 
west front, I had before me a contrast in a bril- 
liant group marshalled by my friend and class- 
mate Colonel Theodore Lyman, in the centre 
of which rose the stately figure in full uniform 
of Major-General Meade. " Ah, Jimmy," said 
Theodore with the aggressive geniality which his 



30 TKe Last Leaf 

old associates so well remember, " come right 
here," and catching me by the arm he pulled 
the corporal into the immediate presence of the 
victor of Gettysburg. " This is Corporal Hos- 
mer," said he, " and this, Jimmy, is Major- 
General Meade," introducing us with much 
friendly patting of my shoulder and a handling 
of the Major-General almost equally familiar. 
He had long been a trusted member of Meade's 
staff but the war was over and a close friendship 
held them on common ground. " He has written 
a book. General, about the war." Then came a 
word of commendation and the tall General, as 
he gave my hand a cordial pressure, beamed 
down upon me with pleasant eyes. In the 
peaceful time that had come, we were all citi- 
zens together ; the private and the General were 
on a level, though that aquiline face had been 
called upon not long before to confront, at the 
head of one hundred thousand men, the hosts 
of Lee. 

Of our other great commanders I never saw 
Thomas, but my knowledge of Sherman was 
something more than the mere glimpse I had 
of the figures of his compeers. His home was 
in St. Louis, in which city I was then residing, 
and he was much in society. He was really a 
Connecticut Yankee though transplanted to 
Ohio, and he was, in figure and character, 
thoroughly a New Englander. He was tall and 
slender, his prominent forehead standing out 



"William T. SHerman 31 

from light straight hair, a stubby beard veiling 
a well-pronounced and well-worked jaw (for he 
was one of the readiest of talkers), it would 
require little scratching to get to the uncon- 
taminated Yankee underneath. A New Eng- 
lander of the best type, shrewd, kindly, deeply 
concerned for the welfare of his country and 
of men. A fashionable lady invited him to dine 
without his wife. Sherman, on arriving, found 
other ladies present; to his hostess, who came 
forward to receive him with effusion, he said: 
" Madam, I dine with Mrs. Sherman to-night," 
and the party went forward without the lion 
who was to have given it distinction. He would 
not have his wife slighted; nor in more import- 
ant things would he endure to see a lame out- 
come when he might set things in better shape. 
He encouraged schools and worthy charities by 
giving them his hearty countenance. ISTo arm 
was more potent than his in saving the country, 
nor was his patriotism selfish. He saved his 
country because he believed it was for the good 
of the world. 

Sherman has been criticised for his ruthless- 
ness, but no one can say that he was not effective. 
He bore on hard but with the belief that only 
such action could bring the war to a close. No 
one could come in contact with him without 
feeling that he was a soft-hearted man. It was 
one of the most interesting evenings of my life 
when, as a guest of N. O. Nelson, the philan- 



32 TKe Last Leaf 

thropic captain of industry in St. Louis, I was 
one of a company of a dozen to hear Sherman 
tell John Fiske his story of the war. We sat 
at table from seven o'clock until midnight, the 
two illustrious figures with their heads together 
exchanging a rapid fire of question and answer, 
but the rest of us were by no means silent. 
Sherman was full of affability and took good- 
naturedly the sharp inquiries. " How' was it, 
General, at Shiloh; was not your line quite too 
unguarded on the Corinth side, and was not the 
coming on of Sidney Johnston a bad surprise 
for you? " " Oh, later in the war," said Sher- 
man, " we no doubt should have done differently, 
but we got ready for them as they came on." 
" Was there not bad demoralisation," I said, 
" ten thousand or more skulkers huddled under 
the bluff on the Tennessee? " " Oh," said Sher- 
man, " the rear of an army in battle is always 
a sorry place; but on the firing line, where I 
was, things did not look so bad." — " Your ad- 
versaries, General, were often good fellows, were 
they not, and you are good friends now? " 
" The best fellows in the world," said Sherman, 
" and as to friendship. Hood wants me to be 
his literary executor and take care of his 
memoirs." 

He was ready to confess to mistakes, and with 
frank and proper exultation pointed out the 
gradual improvement and the triumphant result. 
Plenty of good stories and much hearty laughter 



"William T. SKerman 33 

came in among the more tragic episodes. We saw 
John Fiske take it all in, swaying in his chair 
ponderously back and forth, but the War in the 
Alississippi Valley, which came out soon after, 
showed that his memory retained every point. 
On another occasion, as Sherman on a stormy 
night took me home in his carriage, we skirted 
the blocks which had been the site of Camp Jack- 
son, the first field of the Civil War that Sherman 
had witnessed. That was the beginning of 
things in the West, and he on that day only a 
bystander. He was at the time possibly irreso- 
lute as to what he should do, and he certainly 
had no premonition of the large part he was 
destined to play. As he looked out of the win- 
dow that night into the driving storm on the 
spot where once he had brooded so anxiously, 
I wondered if he had any memory of the soul 
struggle of that crisis. 

After liis death, there took place in the streets 
of St. Louis an imposing military funeral. As 
the cortege paused for a moment, I stood at the 
side of the gun-carriage which bore the coffin 
wrapped in the flag, and paid my tribute to this 
good man and great citizen who had played his 
part well. 

A controversy, which has now died away, used 
to be waged during and soon after the Civil 
War as to whether West Point had really vin- 
dicated a place for itself. Many an American, 
full of that over-confidence which besets us, 



34 THe Last Leaf 

maintained that a man could become a good 
soldier by a turn of the hand as it were. Given 
courage, physical vigour, and fair practical ap- 
titude, a lawyer, a merchant, or a civil engineer 
could take sword in hand and at short notice 
head a squadron or muster an army. This view 
has so far as I know been set forward by no 
one more plausibly than by Jacob D. Cox, a stout 
civilian soldier who led well the Twenty-third 
Corps and later became Governor of Ohio and 
a successful Secretary of the Interior. I once 
met General Cox in an interesting way, on a 
Sunday afternoon, at the home of Judge Alfonso 
Taft at Walnut Hills, a pleasant suburb of 
Cincinnati. Judge Taft in those days was a 
somewhat noteworthy figure. He had served 
the country well as Minister to Russia and also 
as a member of the Cabinet at Washington, and 
was one of the foremost men of the fair city 
where he lived. His sister-in-law married an 
intimate friend of mine, and there were other 
reasons which gave me some title to his notice, 
and I was for the time his guest. A sturdy 
white-haired boy of ten or so sat at the table 
at dinner and hung with his brothers about the 
group of elders as they talked in the afternoon. 
This boy was William H. Taft taking in the 
scraps of talk as the chatting progressed on his 
father's porch. General Cox dropped in for an 
afternoon call and I scanned eagerly his scholarly 
face and figure, well knit through the harshest 



Jacob D. Cox 35 

experiences in camp and battle. He was a man 
of fine tastes and well accomplished both in 
science and literature with a substratum of 
manly tenacity and good sense, who did noble 
duty on many a field and produced in his 
Military Reminiscences one of our most satis- 
factory books on the Civil War period. The 
manner of the veteran was simple and pleasant. 
Nothing betrayed that he had been the hero in 
such an eventful past. I have of course no 
thought of sketching his career or criticising 
his account of it. As to the point to which I 
have referred, his claim that a peaceful Ameri- 
can can be turned into a soldier off-hand and 
that the ATest Pointers no more made good in 
the war than did the civilians, he sets forth the 
case calmly. He takes the curriculum at West 
Point as it was sixty years ago and plainly 
shows that as regards acquirements in general 
it bears a poor comparison with that of civilian 
universities and colleges of that period. As 
to especial military education, he claims that 
the instruction at West Point was comparatively 
trifling; the cadets were well drilled only in the 
elements, while as regards the larger matters 
of strategy and the management of armies there 
was slight opportunity to learn. The cadet 
came out qualified to drill a company or at 
most a regiment, while as to manoeuvring of 
divisions and corps he had no chance to perfect 
himself. The cadet, moreover, had this handi- 



36 TKe Last Leaf 

cap — he had been made the slave of routine and 
his natural enterprise had been so far repressed 
that he magnified petty details and precedents 
and was slow to adapt himself to an unlooked-for 
emergency. He cites an example where he him- 
self was set to fight a battle by a West Point 
superior with old-fashioned muzzle- loading guns, 
the improved arms which were at hand and 
which might easily have been used with good 
effect remaining in the rear. His conclusion is 
that a wide-awake American trained in the 
hustle of daily life, with a good basis of common 
sense and some capacity for adaptation, could, 
with a few months' experience, undertake to good 
advantage the direction of soldiers, and that the 
West Point preceding 1861 had an influence 
rather nugatory in bringing about success. It 
is perhaps sufficient answer to arguments of this 
kind that while during our Civil War there was 
a most relentless sifting of men for high posi- 
tions, little regard being paid to the education and 
antecedents of those submitted to it, the men 
who finally emerged at the front were almost 
exclusively West Pointers. Grant, Sherman, 
Sheridan, and Thomas, the Union champions par 
excellence, were West Pointers. Lee, Stonewall 
Jackson, the Johnstons, and Longstreet are no 
less conspicuous among the Confederates. Civil- 
ians for the most part were not found in the 
high places, or if they were so placed the results 
were unfortunate, as in the cases of Butler, 



NatHaniel P. BaxiKs 37 

Banks, and McClernand. There were of course 
good soldiers who came from civil life. Cox 
himself is a conspicuous instance, and there were 
Terry, John A. Logan, and other good division 
commanders. On the Southern side may be in- 
stanced N. B. Forrest and J. B. Gordon; but 
these men rarely attained to more than second- 
ary positions, the highest places falling, as if 
by gravitation, into the hands of West Pointers. 
An influence there was in the little academy on 
the Hudson which somehow brought to pass a 
superior warlike efficiency. The training at 
West Point, supplemented as it usually was by 
campaigning on the plains, although duty was 
done only by men in squads, and the hardships 
and perils were scarcely greater than those en- 
countered by the ordinary pioneer and rail- 
road-builder, somehow evoked the field-marshal 
quality and made it easier to grapple with the 
tremendous problems with which the army was 
so suddenly confronted. 

A certain pathos attaches to the story of some 
of those civilian soldiers. In my youthful days, 
I had often seen N^. P. Banks, who had risen 
from the humblest beginning into much political 
importance. No large distinction can be claimed 
for him in any direction, and for elevation of 
character he was certainly not marked; but he 
was a man of respectable ability and he climbed 
creditably from factory-boy to mechanic and 
thence (through no noisome paths)* to Congress, 



38 The Last Leaf 

to the post of Governor, and to the Speakership 
at Washington. 

He had military ambition and with the begin- 
ning of the war went at once into the army, 
unfortunately for him, as major-general and 
commander of a department. Could he have gone 
in as captain or colonel, his fortune would 
probably have been different. But, sent to com- 
mand in the Shenandoah Valley, it was his fate 
to meet at the outset the most formidable of 
adversaries, Stonew^all Jackson. He was sorely 
hoodwinked and humiliated, but so were several 
of his successors. At Cedar Mountain, under- 
standing that his orders were peremptory, he 
threw his corps upon double their numbers and 
fought with all the bravery in the world though 
with defective tactics. Another corps should 
have been at hand, but it failed to arrive. There 
was a moment when Banks, weak though he 
was, was near to victory, but he failed in the 
end in an impossible task and was made scape- 
goat for the blunders of others. He was sent 
to supersede Butler in Louisiana with a force 
quite inadequate for the duty expected. It was 
here that I came into contact with him. In- 
terested friends had laid my case before him, as 
one who might serve well in a higher position 
than that of a private, and he good-naturedly 
sent word to me to report to him at a certain hour 
in the rotunda of the St. Charles Hotel at New 
Orleans. The city was in the firm grasp of the 



Nathaniel P. BanKs 39 

Union, as our transport had sailed up the even- 
ing before. The ships of Farragut, their decks 
crowded with blue jackets held under their 
broad-sides a dense and sullen multitude. A 
heavy salute reverberated from the river as the 
new commander took his place, but conditions 
were precarious. 

As I walked up the street in my soldier's dress, 
a handsome Southern girl almost ran me off the 
sidewalk with a look in her face which, but for 
fear of the calaboose, might have been backed 
up by words and acts of insult, while the faces 
of the men were full of hate. I stood at last 
in the rotunda of the St. Charles Hotel and 
presently the commander-in-chief, threading his 
way through a throng of officers, was at my side. 
I was much dishevelled and still ill after a 
stormy passage in a crowded ship, but the Gen- 
eral was very courteous to the private. He had 
heard of my enlistment and indicated that he 
would be glad to utilise me, as he desired to 
utilise every man, for the best welfare of the 
service. What did I desire? I told him I had 
no thought but to do my duty as well as I could 
wherever I might be put. He discussed the 
situation reasonably, then offered me a clerkship 
at headquarters, where I might escape the chief 
perils of the campaign and where perhaps my 
education would serve the public. For a mo- 
ment I hesitated and he passed on, leaving me 
to decide. Mv friends felt that I had not the 



40 TKe Last Leaf 

pliysical strength for work in the field; should 
I accept the snug place back of the firing-line 
or risk it at the front? By the next day, I had 
fully determined to stick to my regiment. I 
sought the General again at headquarters. 
Colonel Irwin of his staff at the moment was 
arranging around his shoulders the yellow sash 
of the major-general for the formal ceremony 
of taking command, which was close at hand. 
But the General had a kindly recognition of the 
private, assented to my decision, and gave me a 
pass to the regiment, which had already been 
hurried onward to the front. I laid my knap- 
sack down by the side of that of my young 
brother in the camp, which was then at the front. 
Banks was a kindly man who meant and did 
the best he could for the humblest soldier in 
his army. His further military career I can 
only briefly sketch. He planned two fierce and 
calamitous assaults upon Port Hudson ; errors no 
doubt, but Grant and Lee at the moment were 
making just such errors. The Red River cam- 
paign was a disastrous failure, but Banks had 
every handicap which a general could suffer : an 
-insufficient force, a demand from the Adminis- 
tration that he should attend to a civil reorder- 
ing when only fighting was in place, subordinates 
insolent and disobedient. And finally nature 
herself took arms against him, for the Red 
River fell when, by all precedents, it should 
have risen. It was an enterprise which his 



Benjamin F. Bxitler 41 

judgment utterly disapproved, the difficulties 
of which he faced with good resolution. It 
ended his career, for though once at a later 
time he went to Congress, he ever afterwards 
stood a discredited figure, dying, as I have heard, 
poor and broken-hearted in obscurity. His State 
has tried to render him a late justice by setting 
him up in bronze on Beacon Hill. It was done 
through opposition and the statue is sneered at 
more often than admired. He was an able man 
I believe and meant well, and I for one find it 
pathetic that the lines of my old commander 
did not fall more pleasantly. 

Butler, on the other hand, I do not regard as 
a pathetic figure. On the night of my arrival 
in New Orleans, strolling about the strange city, 
I found myself at headquarters, and a Massa- 
chusetts boy standing sentry on the porch in 
a spirit of comradeship invited me up. As I 
ascended the steps Butler, who had been standing 
at the door, closed it with a crash and retired 
within. Through a crevice in the blinds he was 
plain to be seen seated at his desk in profound 
thought, his bulldog face in repose, his rude 
forcefulness very manifest. His rule at New 
Orleans had come to an end and no doubt he 
was pondering it and dreaming of what the 
future had in store for him. His burly frame 
was relaxed, his bluff unshaken countenance 
with the queer sinister cast of the eyes fully 
lighted up by the lamp on his table. I studied 



42 THe Last Leaf 

liim at leisure, his marvellous energy for a mo- 
ment in repose. In those dajs his name was 
much in the mouths of men, and whatever may 
be said in his disfavour, it cannot be denied 
after fifty years that his rule of New Orleans 
was a masterpiece of resolution, a riding rough- 
shod over a great disaffected city which marked 
him as full of intrepidity and executive force. 
In the field he was a worse failure than ever 
Banks had been. In my idea he deserves in 
1864 the characterisation by Charles Francis 
Adams. He was the Grouchy who made futile 
Grant's advance upon Richmond and he blun- 
dered at Fort Fisher, but he was a pachyderm of 
the toughest — too thick-skinned to be troubled 
by the scratches of criticism, always floundering 
to the front with unquenched energy, sometimes 
a power for good and sometimes for evil. It is 
hard to strike the balance and say whether for 
the most part he helped or hindered, but our 
past would lack a strong element of picturesque- 
ness if old Ben Butler were eliminated. 

There were patlietic figures among the West 
Pointers as well as among tlie civilian generals. 
At St. Louis, in the seventies, I used to see 
sometimes an unobtrusive man in citizen's dress, 
marked by no trait which distinguished him 
from the ordinary, a man serious in his bear- 
ing, who one might easily think had undergone 
some crushing blow. Tin's was Major-General 
John Pope. His son was in our university and 



JoHn Pope 43 

his sister, a most kind and gracious lady, was 
a near friend. Pope seems destined to go down 
in our history merely as a braggart and an in- 
competent. Probably no man of that time meant 
better or was more abused by capricious fate. 
Cox, whose daughter married the son of Pope 
and Yx'ho therefore came to know him well in 
his later years, defends him vigorously. In the 
early years of the war he showed himself bold 
and active. The capture of Island ISTumber Ten 
with its garrison was rather a naval and en- 
gineering exploit than an achievement of the 
army, but Pope seems to have done well what 
was required of him and probably deserved his 
promotion to the command of a corps at Corinth 
when an advance southward was meditated in 
the early summer of '62. It was with deep un- 
willingness that he received the summons of the 
Administration to command an army in Vir- 
ginia, and only assumed the place from the feel- 
ing that a soldier must stand where he is put. 
Arrived at Washington, he found himself in an 
atmosphere hot with wrath and mortification. 
The Peninsular campaign had failed and strong 
spirits like Stanton and Ben Wade, Chairman of 
the Committee on the Conduct of the War, were 
on fire through disappointment. The new Gen- 
eral, whose position until within a few months 
had been a liumble one, was brow-beaten and 
dominated by powerful personalities and forced 
to stand for acts and words which were not 



44 THe Last Leaf 

really his own. He declared, said Cox, that his 
bombastic and truculent orders were practically 
dictated by others. The declaration that his 
headquarters would be his saddle, which Lee so 
wittily turned, saying, " then his headquarters 
would be where his hindquarters ought to be," 
Pope declares he never made. When his en- 
vironment had in this way aroused prejudice 
against him, he was set to command an army 
whose higher officers felt outraged at his sudden 
rise over their heads and whose soldiers were 
discouraged by defeat. He was expected to op- 
pose skilful and victorious foes with instruments 
that bent and broke in the crisis as he trie<l to 
wield them. Only supreme genius could have 
wrought success in such a situation, and that 
Pope did not at all possess. He was only a 
man of resolution, with no exceptional gifts, 
who desired to do his best for his country. In 
the West he had proceeded usefully and honour- 
ably, and it was the worst misfortune for him 
that he was taken for the new place. I hope 
that history will deal kindly with him and that, 
since he was a worthy and strenuous patriot, 
he will not live merely as an obiect of execration 
and ridicule. 

In August, 1863, my too brief term of service 
having expired, I came home to the Connecticut 
Valley and resumed my pulpit, which I had left 
for a vacation and powder-smoke. Gettysburg 
and Vicksburg had taken place, and we at the 



Henry ^W. Slocum 45 

North too fondly hoped that all was over and 
that we might confidently settle down to peace. 
When going west to Buffalo for a visit I was 
delayed a few hours at Syracuse and took the 
occasion to call on an intimate friend of my 
father and myself, the Rev. Samuel J. May. Mr. 
May, a bright and beautiful spirit, was by nature 
a strong peace man, but, fired by the woes of 
the slave, he had become an extreme abolitionist 
and was ready to fight for his principles. En- 
tering Mr. May's quiet study I found him in 
intimate talk with a man of unassuming de- 
meanour, in citizen's dress, marked by no dis- 
tinction of face or figure. He might have been 
a delegate to a peace convention, or a country 
minister from way-back calling on a professional 
brother. What was my astonishment when Mr. 
May introduced him as Major-General Henry W. 
Slocum, commander of the Twelfth Corps, who, 
taking a short furlough after Gettysburg, was 
at home for tlie moment and had dropped in 
for a friendly call. Slocum had been in the 
thick of most of the bitter Virginia battles from 
the first, and all the world knew that at Gettys- 
burg, by beating back the thrust of the Stone- 
wall division toward the Baltimore pike, he had 
secured the threatened rear of the army of the 
Potomac and averted defeat. This had taken 
place in the preceding month, and I naturally 
marvelled that the unpretending, simple man 
could be that victorious champion, but for the 



46 XKe Last L>eaf 

time being we were there plain citizens, and, 
American fashion, the Major-General and the 
Corporal shook hands and fraternised on equal 
terms. It probably helped me with Slocum that 
I too had been in danger. About the time he 
was defending Gulp's Hill, I had been in the 
ditch at the foot of the Port Hudson rampart. 

While reticent as to his part at Gettysburg, 
he spoke with feeling of what his corps had 
been through, and knowing that both Mr. May 
and I were Massachusetts men took an evident 
pleasure in commending the regiments from that 
State. Of the 2d Massachusetts he spoke 
with high appreciation; it was an admirable 
body of men and thoroughly disciplined. It was 
always ready ; its losses were fearful and he felt 
that he ought to spare it if he could, but a crisis 
always came wiien only the best would answer, 
and again and again the 2d Massachusetts 
was thrown in. Particularly at Gettysburg its 
services had been great and its sacrifice costly. 
He spoke feelingly of the young officers who had 
been slain and also of humbler men. Since that 
time I have stood by the simple stone at the 
" bloody swale at the foot of Gulp's Hill," 
which marked the position held that day by 
the 2d Massachusetts. It takes no trained eye 
to see that it was a point of especial difficulty 
and importance. Some of the men of that 
regiment who fell that day were my own col- 
lege comrades. I was glad to know from his 



Oliver O. Ho-ward 47 

lips that the commander thought their work 
heroic. 

One naturally brackets the name of Slocum 
with that of Howard, secondary figures of 
course in the great Civil War drama and yet 
both steadfast and worthy soldiers. They rose 
together into places of responsibility during the 
Peninsular campaign, became commanders of 
corps about the same time, served side by side 
at Gettysburg, went together to the West, and 
finally, one at the head of Sherman's right wing 
and the other at the head of the left, made the 
march to the sea and through the Carolinas. 
Neither perhaps was a brilliant soldier. So far 
as the records show, Slocum always did his work 
well, was increasingly trusted to the last, and 
nowhere made a grave mistake. In Howard's 
case, the rout at Chancellorsville will always de- 
tract from his fame; he was, however, on that 
day new in his place, and the infatuation of 
Hooker by an evil contagion passed down to 
his lieutenants. But he too steadily improved, 
refusing resolutely to be discouraged by his 
mistakes and always doing better next time. 
Perhaps no one act during the war was more 
important than the occupation of Cemetery Hill 
on the morning of July 1, 1863, by a Federal 
division. I think that the credit of that act can- 
not be denied to Howard. In a later time he 
passed under the control of Sherman in the 
West, a shrewd and relentless judge of men, and 



48 The Last Leaf 

Sherman trusted him to the utmost. To a 
group of officers in their cups who were chaffing 
Howard for being Puritanical, Sherman curtly 
said : " Let Howard alone ; I want one general 
who does n't drink." 

I saw General Howard at Gettysburg on the 
fortieth anniversary of the battle. We were 
under the same roof, and during the evening I 
sat close to him in the common room and heard 
him talk, — a strenuous old man, his empty 
sleeve recalling tragically the combats through 
which he had passed. Close by under the stars 
could still be traced the lines occupied by Stein- 
wehr's division, the troops which with such 
momentous results Howard had posted on Ceme- 
tery Hill. I might easily have talked with him, 
for he was affable to old and young, but I pre- 
ferred to study the good veteran from a distance 
and let others draw out his story while I listened. 

In the winter of 1861 I went to Port Royal, 
through the good offices of my friend Rufus 
Saxton, then a captain and quartermaster of the 
expedition under which Dupont had taken pos- 
session of the Sea Islands in South Carolina. 
The capture of Port Royal had taken place a 
few weeks before and the army was encamped 
on the conquered territory. Saxton was an in- 
teresting figure, who in an unusual way showed 
during the war a fine spirit of self-sacrifice. At 
the outbreak, a high position in the field was 
within his grasp; he was second in command 



IVufus Saxton 49 

to Lyon in St. Louis, and being intimate with 
McClellan might have held a position of respon- 
sibility in the field. He was indeed made a 
general. Once in 1862 he was in command of 
a considerable force, and when Banks was driven 
out of the Shenandoah Valley by Stonewall Jack- 
son he withstood at Harper's Ferry the rush of 
the Confederates into Maryland. But at the 
solicitation of Lincoln and Stanton he gave up 
service in the field, for which he was well fitted 
and which he earnestly desired, to act as Mili- 
tary Governor of the Sea Islands, where his 
work was to receive and care for the thousands 
of negroes who by the flight of their masters 
in that region had been left to themselves. Here 
he remained throughout the war, while his old 
comrades were winning fame at the head of 
divisions and corps, a patient, humane teacher 
and administrator among the nation's wards. 
He was content to live through the stirring time 
inconspicuous, but he won the respect of all 
kindly hearts at the North and deep gratitude 
from the helpless blacks whom he so long and 
humanely befriended. . 

I came in contact during that visit with a 
number of soldiers soon to be famous. In the 
boat which carried me from the transport to 
the shore I had as a fellow-passenger James H. 
Wilson, then a lieutenant but soon to be a 
famous cavalry commander. He was a restless 
athletic young man, who when I met him was 
4 



50 THe Last Leaf 

on fire with wrath over the giving up of Mason 
and Slidell, the news of which had come to the 
post by our steamer. I tried to argue with him, 
that we had enough on our hands with the Soutli 
without rushing into war with England besides, 
but he was impetuously confident that we could 
take care of all foes outside and in, and main- 
tained that the giving up of the envoys was a 
burning shame. His vigour and confidence were 
excessive, I thought, but they carried him far 
in a time soon to come, 

I talked with General Thomas W. Sherman, 
the commander of the expedition, in his tent, 
but was more interested in a dispute whicli 
presently sprang up between the General and a 
companion of mine, Jonathan Saxton, father of 
Rufus Saxton, an abolitionist of the most per- 
fervid type, a good talker and quite unabashed, 
plain farmer though he was, by a pair of 
epaulettes. 

Among our regular officers there were few 
abolitionists. Rufus Saxton told me that Lyon 
was the only one of any distinction who could 
be so classed among the men he knew. T. W. 
Sherman was like his fellows and listened im- 
patiently to what he felt was fanaticism gone 
mad, but the fluent old farmer drove home his 
radicalism undauntedly. T. W. Sherman before 
the war had been a well-known figure as com- 
mander of Sherman's flying artillery, which was 
perhaps the most famous organisation of the 



"Wri^Ht and Stevens 51 

regular army, but his name scarcely appears in 
the history of the Civil War, more perhaps from 
lack of good fortune than of merit. He was 
crippled with wounds in the first important 
battle in which he was concerned. The two 
brigadiers at Port Royal, Horatio G. Wright 
and Isaac 1. Stevens, both became soldiers of 
note. Wright was a handsome fellow in his 
best years, whom I recall stroking his chin with 
an amused quizzical expression while Jonathan 
Saxton poured out his Garrisonism. His bri- 
gade lay well to the south and his headquarters 
were at the old Tybee lighthouse which marked 
the entrance to the harbour of Savannah. I 
climbed with him up the sand hill, from the 
top of which we looked down upon Fort Pulaski 
then in Confederate hands and within short 
range. We peered cautiously over the summit, 
for shells frequently came from the fort. 
Wright held in his hand a fragment of one 
which liad just before exploded. " How well it 
took the groove ! '' he said, pointing out to me 
the signs on the iron that the rifled cannon from 
which it had come had given the missile in the 
discharge the proper twist. Wright's after-career 
is part of the war's history, always strenuous 
and constantly rising. The fame which attaches 
to the Sixth Corps is largely due to the leader- 
ship of Wright. If he fell short at Cedar Creek 
in 1864 it was a lapse which may be pardoned 
in the circumstances. Sheridan retrieved the 



52 XKe Last Leaf 

day and magnanimously palliated the misfortune 
of Wright. " It might have happened to me or 
to any man." The good soldier deserves the 
fine monument which stands by his grave in 
the foreground at Arlington. 

I had at Port Royal a long and friendly talk 
with Isaac I. Stevens. He was already a man 
of note. After achieving the highest honours at 
West Point he had gone to the West, and in 
the great unexplored Pacific Northwest had con- 
quered, built, and systematised until a fair 
foundation was laid for the fine civilisation 
which now sixty years later has been reared 
upon it. He was modest in his bearing, with 
well-knit and sinewy frame, and possessed at 
the same time refined manners and a taste for 
the higher things of life. Before the year had 
passed, his life went out in the second battle of 
Bull Run. In the end of that terrible campaign, 
he essayed with Phil Kearny to stem at Chan- 
tilly the rush of Stonewall Jackson upon Wasli- 
ington. The attempt was successful, but Stevens 
died waving the colours at the head of his men. 
It is said that Lincoln had marked him for the 
command of the Army of the Potomac. He had 
made good in all previous positions, and per- 
haps would have made good in the chief place, 
but here I stumble once more upon a might- 
have-been and am silent. 

Dear ghosts of old-time friends swarm in my 
thought as I dream of those days. The white 



Harvard Soldiers 53 

marbles in Memorial Chapel solemnly bear the 
names of Harvard's Civil War soldiers and tell 
how they died. There was one of whom I might 
say much, an elder companion, a wise and 
pleasant spirit who did something toward my 
shaping for life. A cannon-ball at Cold Harbor 
was the end for him. There was another, a 
brilliant, handsome young Irishman, bred a 
Catholic, who under the influence of Moncure 
D. Conway had come out as a Unitarian and left 
his Washington home for a radical environment 
in the North. He was brilliant and witty with 
small capacity or taste for persistent plodding, 
but forever hitting effectively on the spur of the 
moment. He was as chivalrous as a palladin 
and went to his early grave light-hearted, as part 
of the day's work which must not be shirked. 
I have his image vividly as he laughed and joked 
in our last interview. " Dress-parade at six 
o'clock ; come over and see the dress-paradoes ! " 
He fell wounded at Chancellorsville, and while 
being carried off the field was struck a second 
time as he lay on the stretcher, and so he passed. 
There were fine fellows, too, in those days who 
stood on the other side: McKim, President of 
the Hasty Pudding Club, who fell in Virginia; 
W. H. F. Lee, who was in the Law School and 
whom I recall as a stalwart athlete rowing on 
the Charles. It helped me much a few years 
ago when I visited many Southern battle-fields 
that I could tell old Confederates " Rooney " 



54 THe Last Leaf 

Lee and I had in our youth been college mates. 
My classmate J. B. Clark of Mississippi was a 
graceful magnetic fellow who had small basis 
of scholarship, perhaps, but a marked power for 
effective utterance. He fascinated us by his 
warm Southern fluency, and we gave him at last 
the highest distinction we could confer, the class 
oration. He left us then and we did not see 
him for fifty years. He enlisted in the 21st 
Mississippi and passed through the roughest 
hardships and perils. We felt afterwards that 
he held coldly aloof from us through long years. 
At our jubilee, however, he came back wrinkled 
and white-haired, but quite recognisable as the 
fascinating boy of fifty years before. He had 
a long and good record behind him as an officer 
of the University of Texas, and we gave him 
reason to think that we loved him still. The 
most cordial meetings I have ever known have 
been those between men who had fought each 
other bitterly, each with an honest conviction 
that he was in the right, but who at last have 
come out on common ground. 

Among the Harvard soldiers three stand out 
in my thought as especially interesting, William 
Francis Bartlett, Charles Russell Lowell, and 
Francis Channing Barlow. Bartlett was younger 
than I, entering service when scarcely beyond 
boyhood, losing a leg at Ball's Bluff, and when 
only twenty-three Colonel of the 49th Massa- 
chusetts. I remember well a beautiful night. 



Bartlett and Lo-well 55 

the moon at the full, and the hospital on the 
river bank Just below Port Hudson where hun- 
dreds of wounded men were arriving from a 
disastrous battle-field close at hand. 

Bartlett had ridden into battle on horseback, 
his one leg making it impossible for him to go 
on foot, and he was a conspicuous mark for the 
sharpshooters, A ball had passed through his 
remaining foot, and still another through his 
arm, causing painful wounds to which he was 
forced to yield. He lay stretched out, a tall, 
slender figure with a clear-cut patrician face, 
very pale and still but with every sign of suf- 
fering stoically repressed. He was conscious as 
I stood for a moment at his side. It was not 
a time to speak even a word, but I hoped he 
might feel through some occult influence that a 
Harvard brother was there at hand, full of 
sympathy for him. He afterwards recovered in 
part, and, with unconquerable will, though he 
was only a fragment of a man, went in again 
and was still again stricken. He survived it 
all, and to me it was perhaps the most thrilling 
incident of the Harvard commemoration of 1865 
to see Bartlett, too crippled to walk without their 
support, helped to a place of honour on the stage 
by reverent friends. 

Charles Russell Lowell was in the class pre- 
ceding mine; his father had been my father's 
classmate, and had done me many a favour; his 
mother was Mrs. Anna Jackson Lowell, one of 



$6 TKe Last Leaf 

the best and ablest Boston women of her time. 
In her house I had been a guest. Charles and 
James, the sons, were youths of the rarest intel- 
lectual gifts, each first scholar of his class, of 
whom the utmost was expected. How strange 
that fate should have made them soldiers ! They 
both perished on the battle-field. As I remember 
Charlie Lowell, the boy was fitly the father of 
the man. We were playing football one day on 
the Delta, the old-fashioned game of those days, 
at which modern athletes smile, but which we 
old fellows think was a good tough game for 
all that. I had secured the ball, and thinking 
I had time, placed it rather leisurely, promising 
myself an effective kick. A slight figure bounded 
with lightning rush from the opposing line, and 
from under my very foot drove the ball far be- 
hind me to a point which secured victory. 

How little I knew that I had just witnessed 
a small exhibition of the quickness and prompt 
decision which no long time after on critical 
battle-fields were to be put to splendid use. He 
proved to be a nearly perfect soldier; Sheridan 
said of him, that he knew of no virtue that could 
be added to Lowell. To us he seems one of the 
manliest of men, thoughtful for others, even for 
dumb beasts. In Edward Emerson's charming 
life of him, nothing, perhaps, is sweeter than 
his affection for his horses, of which it was said 
that thirteen were killed under him before he 
came to death himself. He studied their char- 



Francis C. Barlo'w 57 

acters as if they had been human beings, and 
dwells in his letters on the particular lovable 
traits each one showed — these mute companions 
who stood so closely by him in life and death. 

When our class first assembled in 1851 there 
was a slight boy of seventeen in the company, 
Francis Channing Barlow. He was incon- 
spicuous through face or figure, but it early 
became clear that he was to be our first scholar, 
and a wayward deportment with an odd sar- 
donic wit soon made him an object of interest. 
Barlow came admirably fitted, and this good 
preparation, standing back of great quickness 
and power of mind, made it easy for him almost 
without study to take a leading place. As a 
boy he was well grounded, outside of his special 
accomplishments, in Latin, Greek, and mathe- 
matics. I remember his telling me that his 
mother read Plutarch to him when he was a 
child, and that and many another good book he 
had thoroughly stored away. Such accomplish- 
ments were an exasperation to us poor fellows 
who had come in from the remote outskirts and 
found we must compete for honours with men 
so well equipped. We perhaps magnified the 
gifts and acquirements of the fellows who had 
been more favourably placed. Barlow seemed 
like a paragon of scholarship, and the non- 
chalance with which he always won in the class- 
rooms was a constant marvel. He had a queer 
way of turning serious things into fun. With 



58 TKe Last Leaf 

a freshman desire for self-improvement, a thing 
apt to evaporate in the college atmosphere, we 
had formed a society for grave writing and de- 
bate and hired for our meetings the lodge-room 
of the " Glorious Apollers " or some such 
organisation. At an early meeting of the so- 
ciety, while we were solemnly struggling through 
a dignified programme, Barlow suddenly ap- 
peared from a side-door rigged out most fan- 
tastically in plumes and draperies. He had 
somehow got hold of the regalia of the order 
and drawlingiy announced himself as the great 
panjandrum who had come to take part. He 
danced and paraded before the conclave and had 
no difficulty in turning the session into a wild 
revel of extravagant guffaws and antics, and 
after that time the occasions were many when 
Barlow gave a comic turn to things serious. It 
was said that Barlow, going back and forth on 
the train between Concord and Boston as he did 
at one time, got hold of an impressionable brake- 
man, and by exhortation brought about in him 
a change of heart, after the most approved 
evangelical manner, counterfeiting perfectly the 
methods of a revivalist, which he did for the 
fun of the thing. The story, of course, was an 
invention, but quite in character. 

He was no respecter of conventions and some- 
times trod ruthlessly upon proprieties. " What 
will Barlow do next? " was always the question. 
In the class-room he was never rattled in any 



Francis C. Barlo-w 59 

emergency, his really sound scholarship was 
always perfectly in hand and in a strait no one 
could bluff it with such sang-froid and audacity. 
He kept his place at the head of the class to 
the very end, but there Robert Treat Paine came 
out precisely his equal. Among the many thou- 
sand marks accumulating through four years the 
total for both men was exactly alike — a thing 
which I believe has never happened before or 
since. 

Before the Arsenal in Cambridge stood an 
innocent old cannon that had not been fired 
since the War of 1812, perhaps not since the 
Revolution. The grass and flowers grew about 
its silent muzzle, and lambs might have fed 
there as in the pretty picture of Landseer. Any 
thought that the old cannon could go off had 
long ceased to be entertained. One quiet night 
a tremendous explosion took place; the cannon 
had waked up from its long sleep, arousing the 
babies over a wide region and many a pane of 
glass was shivered. What had got into the old 
cannon that night was long a mystery. Many 
years after Barlow was discovered at the bottom 
of it — it was the first shot he ever fired. 

Dr. James Walker, the college president, said 
to a friend of mine at the beginning of the war, 
speculating on the probable futures of the boys 
who had been under his care, " There 's Barlow, 
now he '11 go in and come out at the top." Bar- 
low had been a sad puzzle to the faculty, good 



6o TKe Last Leaf 

men, often perplexed to know what to do with 
him or what would become of him. Dr. Walker's 
astuteness divined well the outcome. As I re- 
view those early years I can see now that Barlow 
then gave plain signs of the qualities which he 
was later to display. I remember sleeping with 
him once in a room in the top story of Stoughton 
in our sophomore year and he talked for a great 
part of the night about Napoleon. The Corsican 
was the hero who beyond all others had fasci- 
nated him, whose career he would especially love 
to emulate. We were a pair of boys in a peace- 
ful college, living in a time which apparently 
would afford no opportunity for a soldier's 
career. I have often thought of that talk. Bar- 
low w^as really not unlike the youthful Napoleon, 
in frame he was slender and delicate, his com- 
plexion verged toward the olive, his face was 
always beardless. I never saw him thrown off 
his poise in any emergency. The straits of 
course are not great in which a college boy is 
placed, but such as they were. Barlow was al- 
ways cool, with his mind working at its best 
in the midst of them. He was never abashed, 
but had a resource and an apt one in every 
emergency. He was absolutely intrepid before 
the thrusts of our sharpest examiners and as I 
have said could bluff it boldly and dexterously 
where his knowledge failed; then the odd cyni- 
cism with which he turned down great pretentions 
and sometimes matters of serious import, had a 



Francis C. Barlovr 6l 

Napoleonic cast. In '61 he enlisted as a private 
but rose swiftly through the grades to the com- 
mand of a regiment. At Antietam he had part 
of a brigade and coralled in a meteoric way on 
Long-street's front line some hundreds of prison- 
ers. His losses were great but he was in the 
thick of it himself, his poise unruffled until he 
was borne desperately wounded from the field. 
The surgeon who attended him told me, if I re- 
member right, that a ball passed entirely through 
his body carrying with it portions of his clothing, 
if such a thing were possible ; but, with his usual 
nonchalance he laughed at wounds and while still 
weak and emaciated went back to his place again 
in the following spring at the head of a brigade. 
He underwent Chancellorsville, and for the Union 
cause it was a great misfortune that his fine 
brigade was taken from its place on Hooker's 
right before Stonewall Jackson made his charge. 
Had Barlow been there he might have done 
something to stay the disaster. At Gettysburg, 
however, he was in the front in command of 
a division. An old soldier, a lieutenant that 
day under Barlow, told me that he had charge 
of the ambulances of the division and on the 
march near Emmitsburg Barlow put into the 
lieutenant's especial charge the ambulance of his 
wife who, with a premonition of calamity, in- 
sisted on being near at hand to help. When the 
battle joined and Gordon swept overwhelmingly 
upon Barlow's division, the lieutenant had diffi- 



62 XHe Last Leaf 

culty in restraining Mrs. Barlow from rushing 
at once upon the field among the fighting men. 
He held her back almost by force but she re- 
mained close at hand. Barlow was again desper- 
ately wounded, so hurt that his death seemed 
inevitable, and when the faithful wife, at last 
making her way, presented herself even in the 
rebel lines with a petition for her husband, sup- 
posed to be dying, Gordon chivalrously gave him 
up. It was magnanimous, but for him ill-timed. 
Again BarloAv laughed at his wounds. In May, 
1864, he was in the field at the head of the 
first division of Hancock's corps and on the 12th 
of May performed the memorable exploit, break- 
ing fairly the centre of Lee's army and bringing 
it nearer to defeat than it ever came until the 
catastrophe at Appomattox. He captured the 
Spottsylvania salient together with the best 
division of the army of northern Virginia, Stone- 
wall Jackson's old command, two generals, thirty 
colours, cannon, and small arms to correspond. 
John I^^oyes, a soldier of a class after us, told 
me that in the salient he and Barlow worked 
like privates in the confusion of the capture, 
turning with their own hands against the enemy 
a cannon that had just been taken. Barlow was 
as cool as when he fired off the old cannon in 
Cambridge ten years before. This stroke proved 
futile, but from no shortcoming of Barlow's. A 
feAV weeks later at Cold Harbor he effected a 
lodgment within the Confederate works when 



Francis C Barlo-w 63 

all others failed. That too proved futile, but 
his reputation was confirmed as one of the most 
brilliant of division commanders. There is a 
photograph in existence portraying Hancock and 
his division generals as they appeared during 
that terrible campaign. It was taken in the 
woods in the utmost stress of service. Barlow 
stands in the group just as he looked in college, 
the face thin and beardless, almost that of a 
boy, and marked with the nonchalance which 
always characterised him. There are no mili- 
tary trappings, a rough checked shirt, trousers, 
slouching from the waist to campaign boots, 
hang loosely about the attenuated limbs. Soon 
after that he was carried from the field, not 
wounded, but in utter exhaustion after exposures 
which no power of will could surmount. A few- 
months' respite and he was at his post again, 
intercepting by a swift march Lee's retreating 
column, almost the last w^arlike act of the Army 
of the Potomac before Appomattox. In this "Last 
Leaf " I do not deal with " might-have-beens " I 
only remember, but we old classmates of Barlow 
have a feeling that had the war continued, if 
only the bullets to which he was always so hos- 
pitable had spared him, he would have gone on 
to the command of a corps, and perhaps even 
to greater distinctions. The photograph of Bar- 
low, published after his death in the Harvard 
Graduates' Magazine, presents him as he was 
soon after the war was over. He had recovered 



64 THe Last Leaf 

from the hardships, the face is fairly well 
rounded but still rather that of a beardless, 
laughing boy than of a man. A stranger study- 
ing the face would hear with incredulity the 
story of the responsibilities and dangers which 
that face had confronted. He laughed it all off 
lightly, and that was his way when occasionally 
in his later years he came to our meetings. 

I recall a reunion in 1865, ten years after our 
graduation. We sat in full numbers about a 
sumptuous banquet at the Parker House in Bos- 
ton, and naturally in that year the returned 
soldiers were in the foreground. In our class 
were two major-generals, four colonels, a dis- 
tinguished surgeon, and many more of lower 
rank. Barlow was the central figure. Theo- 
dore Lyman, who presided, introduced him with 
a glowing tribute, recounting his achievements, 
a long list from the time he had entered as a 
private to his culmination as a full Major- 
General. He called at last for nine cheers for 
the man who had captured the Spottsylvania 
salient, and we gave them with a roar that shook 
the building. Barlow was the only man in the 
room who showed not the slightest emotion. He 
stood impassive, his face wearing his queer 
smile. Other men might have been abashed at 
the tumultuous warmth of such a reception from 
his old mates ; a natural utterance at such a time 
would have been an expression of joy that the 
war was over and that tlie country had been 



Francis C. Barlo-w 65 

saved, coupled with modest satisfaction that he 
had borne some part in the great vindication, 
but that was not Barlow's way. He laughed it 
off lightly, as if it had been a huge joke. My 
classmate, the late Joseph Willard of Boston, 
told me of a reunion of the class at a time much 
later. The men were discussing the stained-glass 
window which it had been decided should be 
put in Memorial Hall. Since the class had a 
distinguished military record it was felt that 
there should be martial suggestion in the window 
and the question was what classic warrior should 
be portrayed. The face, it was thought, should 
have the lineaments of our most famous soldier. 
Barlow, who was present, pooh-poohed the whole 
idea, especially the suggestion that his face 
should appear, but someone present having sug- 
gested Alcibiades, probably not seriously as a 
proper type, that seemed to strike Barlow's sense 
of humour. That reckless classic scapegrace to 
his cynical fancy perhaps might pass, he might 
be Alcibiades, but who should be the dog? Alci- 
biades had a dog whose misfortune in losing his 
tail has been transmitted through centuries by 
the pen of Plutarch. " Who will be the dog? " 
said Barlow and called upon someone to furnish 
a face for the hero's canine companion. The 
scheme for the window came near to going to 
wreck amid the outbursts of laughter. It was 
carried through later, however, but Alcibiades 
and the dog do not appear, although Barlow 



66 THe Last Leaf 

does. No other Harvard soldier reached Bar- 
low's eminence, and probably in the whole Army 
of the Potomac there were few abler champions. 
He was a strange, gifted, most picturesque per- 
sonality, no doubt a better man under his cynical 
exterior than he would ever suffer it to be 
thought. His service was great, and the memory 
of him is an interesting and precious possession 
to those who knew him in boyhood and were in 
touch with him to the end. 



CHAPTER III 

HORACE MANN AND ANTIOCH COLLEGE 

THE cataclysm of the Civil War, iu which as 
the preceding pages show I had been in- 
volved, had shaken me in my old moorings. I 
found myself not content in a quiet parish in 
the Connecticut Valley, and as I fared forth 
was fortunate enough to meet a leader in a 
remarkable personage. Horace Mann was in- 
deed dead, but remained, as he still remains, a 
power. His brilliant gifts and self-consecration 
made him, first, a great educational path-breaker. 
From that he passed into politics, exhibiting in 
Congress abilities of the highest. Like an in- 
constant lover, however, he harked back to his old 
attachment, and putting aside a fine preferment, 
the governorship of Massachusetts, it was said, 
forsook his old home for the headship of An- 
tioch College in south-western Ohio. I shall not 
dispute here whether or not he chose wisely; 
much less, how far a lame outcome at Antioch 
was due to his human limitations, and how far 
to the inevitable conditions. He was a potent and 

67 



68 XKe Last Leaf 

unselfish striver for the betterment of men, 
and his words and example still remain an 
inspiration. 

My father in these years was a trustee of 
Antioch College, and this brought our house- 
hold into touch with the illustrious figure 
of whom all men spoke. My memory holds more 
than a film of him, rather a vivid picture, his 
stately height dominating my boyish inches, as 
I stood in his presence. He was spare to the 
point of being gaunt, every fibre charged with 
a magnetism which caused a throb in the by- 
stander. Over penetrating eyes hung a beetling 
brow, and his aggressive, resonant voice com- 
manded even in slight utterances. I recall him 
in a public address. The newspapers were full 
of the Strassburg geese, which, nails being 
driven through their web feet to hold them mo- 
tionless, were fed to develop exaggerated livers, 
— these for the epicures of Paris. " For health 
and wholesome appetite," he exclaimed, " I coun- 
sel you to eschew les pates de foie gras, but 
climb a mountain or swing an axe." No great 
sentence in an exhortation to vigorous, manful 
living. But the scornful staccato with which 
he rolled out the French, and the ringing voice 
and gesture with which he accompanied his ex- 
hortation, stamped it indelibly. From that day 
to this, if I have felt a beguilement toward the 
flesh-pots, I still hear the stern tones of Horace 
Mann. In general his eloquence was extraor- 



Horace Mann 69 

dinary, and I suppose few Americans have pos- 
sessed a power more marked for cutting, bitter 
speech. His invective was masterly, and too 
often perhaps merciless, and it was a weapon 
he was not slow to wield on occasions large and 
small. In Congress he lashed deservedly low- 
minded policies and misguided blatherskites, 
but his wrathful outpourings upon pupils for 
some trivial offence were sometimes over-copious. 
There are Boston schoolmasters, still living per- 
haps, who yet feel a smart from his scourge. 
His personality was so incisive that probably 
few were in any close or long contact with him 
without a good rasping now and then. My 
father was the most amiable of men, yet even 
he did not escape. As an Antioch trustee he 
was in charge of funds which were not to be 
applied unless certain conditions were satisfied. 
Horace Mann demanded the money, and it was 
withheld on occasions and a deluge of ire was 
poured upon my poor father's head. It did not 
cause him to falter in his conviction of Horace 
Mann's greatness and goodness. Nor has this over- 
ready impetuosity ever caused the world to falter 
in its reverence. He came bringing not peace but 
a sword, in all the spheres in which he moved, 
and in Horace Mann's world it was a time for 
the sword. He was a path-breaker in regions 
obstructed by mischievous accumulations. There 
was need of his virile championship, and none 
will say that there was ever in him undue 



70 THe Last Leaf 

thought of self or indifference to the best 
humanity. 

My father held fast to the sharp-cornered 
saint and prophet, though somewhat excoriated 
in the association. He held fast to his trustee- 
ship of Antioch ; and in 1866, Horace Mann hav- 
ing some years before been laid in his untimely 
grave, he stood in his place as president of the 
college. Through the agency of my dear friends 
of those years. Dr. Henry W. Bellows and Dr. 
Edward Everett Hale, I was to go with him as, 
so to speak, his under-study, discharging the 
work of English professor and sometimes the 
duties of preacher. I went gladly. The spirit 
of the dead leader haunted pervasively the shades 
where he had laboured and died. The tradition 
of Horace Mann was paramount among the stu- 
dents, the graduates, and the whole environment. 
I had felt as a boy the spell of his voice and 
presence and knew no hero whom I could follow 
more cordially. It was a joy to become domi- 
ciled in the house which had been built for him 
and where he had breathed his last, and to labour 
day by day along the noble lines which he had 
laid down. This was my post for six years, one 
of which, however, was spent in Europe, in tbe 
hope of gaining an added fitness for my place. 

I have no mind to set down here a record of 
those Antioch years. One experiment we tried 
in a field then very novel and looked upon 
askance. To-dav in our schools and universities 



XKe College Drama 71 

tlie pageant and the drama play a large part. 
Forty years ago they were unknown or in hiding, 
and it may be claimed that our little fresh-water 
college bore a part in initiating a development 
that has become memorable and widely salutary. 
In 1872 I wrote out the story of our attempt 
for 3ilr. Howells, in the Atlantic Monthly, a film 
which may appropriately be staged among my 
pictures. 

The New Wrinkle at Sweethrier; or. The Drama 
in Colleges 

I have been distressed, dear Fastidiosus, by 
your remonstrance concerning the performance 
at our college at Sweetbrier of a " stage play." 
You have heard the facts rightly; that it was 
given under the superintendence of the English 
professor, the evening before Commencement, 
" with many of the accessories of a theatre." 
You urge that it is unprecedented to have at a 
dignified institution, which aims at a high stand- 
ard, under the su]3erintendence of a professor, 
such a performance ; that it excites the prejudices 
of some people against us; and you quote the 
sharp remarks of David's Harp, the organ of the 
Dunkers. You urge that such things can be 
nothing more than the play of boys and girls, 
and are something worse than mere waste of 
time, for they set young people to thinking of 
the theatre, which is irretrievably sunk and only 



72 THe L-ast Leaf 

harmful. In your character of trustee, you are 
sorry it has been done, and beg that it may not 
be done again. 

I beg you to listen to a patient stating of the 
case. It is not without precedent. When you 
were at Worms, in Germany, do you remember 
in the Luther Memorial the superb figure of 
Reuchlin, on one of the outer corners? One or 
two of the statues may be somewhat grander, 
but no other seemed to me so handsome, as it 
stood colossal on its pillar, the scholar's gown 
falling from the stately shoulders, and the face 
so fine there in the bronze, under the abundant 
hair and cap. Reuchlin is said to be the proper 
founder of the German drama. Before his time 
there had been, to be sure, some performing of 
miracle-plays, and perhajDS things of a different 
sort. The German literary historians, however, 
make it an era when Reuchlin came as professor 
to Heidelberg, and, in 1497, set up a stage, with 
students for actors, at the house of Johann, 
Kilmmerer von Dalberg. He wrote his plays in 
Latin. If you wish, I can send you their titles. 
Each act, probably, was prefaced by a synopsis 
in German, and soon translations came into 
vogue, and were performed as well. On that 
little strip of level which the crags and the 
Neckar make so narrow, collected then, as now, 
a fair concourse of bounding youth. One can 
easily fancy how, when the prototypes of the 
trim Burschen of to-day stepped out in their 



In Germany 73 

representation, the applause sounded across to 
the vineyards about the Heiligenberg and Hirsch- 
gasse, and how now and then a knight and a 
dame from the court of the Kurftirst came down 
the Schlossberg to see it all. What Reuchlin 
began, came by no means to a speedy end. In 
the Jesuit seminaries in Germany, in Italy too, 
and elsewhere, as the Reformation came on, I 
find the boys were acting plays. This feature 
in the school was held out as an attraction to 
win students; and in Prague the Fathers them- 
selves wrote dramas to satirise the Protestants, 
introducing Luther as the comic figure. But 
what occurred in the Protestant world was more 
noteworthy. As the choral singing of the school- 
boys affected in an important way the develop- 
ment of music, so the school-plays had much to 
do with the development of the drama. Read 
Gervinus to see how for a century or two it was 
the schools and universities that remained true 
to a tolerably high standard, while in the world 
at large all nobler ideals were under eclipse. It 
was jocund Luther himself who took it under 
his especial sanction, as he did the fiddle and 
the dance, in his sweet large-heartedness finding 
Scriptural precedents for it, and encouraging 
the youths who came trooping to Wittenberg to 
relieve their WTestling with Aristotle and the 
dreary controversy with an occasional play. 
Melancthon, too, gave the practice encourage- 
ment, until not only Wittenberg, but the schools 



74 THe Last Leaf 

of Saxony in general, and Thuringia, whose hills 
were in sight, surpassed all the countries of 
Germany in their attention to plays. In Leipsie, 
Erfurt, and Magdeburg comedies were regularly 
represented before the schoolmasters. But it 
was at the University of Strassburg, even at the 
time when the unsmiling Calvin was seeking 
asylum there, that the dramatic life of the Ger- 
man seminaries found a splendid culmination. 
Yearly, in the academic theatre, took place a 
series of representations, by students, of mar- 
vellous pomp and elaboration. The school and 
college plays were of various characters. Some- 
times they were from Terence, Plautus, or Aris- 
tophanes ; sometimes modifications of the ancient 
mysteries, meant to enforce the Evangelical 
theology; sometimes comedies full of the con- 
temporary life. There are several men that have 
earned mention in the history of German 
literature by writing plays for students. The 
representations became a principal means for 
celebrating great occasions. If special honour 
was to be done to a festival, or a princely visit 
was expected, the market-place, the Rathhaus, or 
the church was prepared, and it was the pro- 
fessor's or the schoolmaster's duty to direct the 
boys in their performance of a play. We get 
glimpses, in the chronicles, of the circumstances 
under which the representations took place. 
Tlie magistrates, even the courts, lent brilliant 
dresses. One old writer laments that the 



ScHiller at ScHool 75 

ignorant people have so little sense for arts of 
this kind. " Often tumult and mocking are 
heard, for it is the greatest joy to the rabble 
if the spectators fall down through broken 
benches." The old three-storied stage of the 
mysteries was often retained, with heaven above, 
earth in the middle space, and hell below; w^here, 
according to the stage direction of the Golden 
Legend, " the devils walked about and made a 
great noise." Lazarus is described as repre- 
sented in the sixteenth century before a hotel, 
before which sat the rich man carousing, while 
Abraham, in a parson's coat, looked out of an 
upper w indow. This rudeness, however, belongs 
rather to the Volks-comodie than the Schul- 
comodie. whose adjuncts were generally far 
more rational, and sometimes even brilliant, as 
in the Strassburg representations. It was only 
in the seminaries that art was preserved from 
utter decay. One may trace the Schul-comodie 
until far down in the eighteenth century, and 
in the last mention of it I find appears an in- 
teresting figure. In 1780, at the military school 
in Stuttgart the birthday of the Duke of Wur- 
temberg was celebrated by a performance of 
Goethe's Clavigo. The leading part was taken 
by a youth of twenty-one, with high cheek- 
bones, a broad, low, Greek brow above straight 
eyebrows, a prominent nose, and lips nervous 
with an extraordinary energy. The German 
narrator says he played the part " abominably. 



76 THe Last Leaf 

shrieking, roaring, unmannerly to a laughable 
degree." It was the young Schiller, wild as a 
pythoness upon her tripod, with the Rohhers, 
which became famous in the following year. 

But I do not mean, Fastidiosus, to cite only 
German precedents, nor to uphold the college 
drama with the names of Reuchlin, Melancthon, 
and Luther alone, majestic though they are. In 
the University of Paris the custom of acting 
plays was one of high antiquity. In 1392 the 
schoolboys of Anglers performed Robin and 
Marian, "as was their annual custom"; and 
in 1477 the scholars of Pontoise represented " a 
certain moralitie or farce, as is their custom." 
In 1558 the comedies of Jacques Grevin were 
acted at the College of Beauvais at Paris; but 
it is in the next century that we come upon 
the most interesting case. In the days of Louis 
XIV. the girls' school at St. Cyr, of which 
Madame de Maintenon was patroness, was, in 
one way and another, the object of much public 
attention. Mademoiselle de Caylus, niece of 
Madame de Maintenon, who became famous 
among the women of cliarming wit and grace 
who distinguished the time, was a pupil at St. 
Cyr, and in her memoirs gives a pleasant sketch 
of her school life. With the rest, " Madame de 
Brinon," she says, 

first superior of St. Cyr, loved verse and the drama ; 
and in default of the pieces of Corneille and Racine, 
which she did not dare to have represented, she 



Irx FrencK ScHools 77 

composed plays herself. It is to her, and her taste 
for the stage, that the world owes Esther and 
Athalie, which Racine wrote for the girls of St. 
Cyr. Madame de Maintenon wished to see one of 
Madame de Brinon's pieces. She found it such as 
it was, that is to say, so bad that she begged to 
have no more such played, and that instead some 
beautiful piece of Corneille or Racine should be 
selected, choosing such as contained least about 
love. These young girls, therefore, undertook the 
rendering of Ginna, quite passably for children who 
had been trained for the stage only by an old nun. 
They then played Andromaque; and, whether it was 
that the actresses were better chosen, or gained in 
grace through experience, it was only too well repre- 
sented for Madame de Maintenon, causing her to 
fear that this amusement would fill them with senti- 
ments the reverse of those which she wished to in- 
spire. However, as she was persuaded that amuse- 
ments of this sort were good for youth, she wrote 
to Racine, begging him to compose for her, in his 
moments of leisure, some sort of moral or historic 
poem, from which love should be entirely banished, 
and in which he need not believe that his reputation 
was concerned, since it would remain buried at St. 
Cyr. The letter threw Racine into great agitation. 
He wished to please Madame de Maintenon. . To 
refuse was impossible for a courtier, and the com- 
mission was delicate for a man who, like him, had 
a great reputation to sustain. At last he found in 
the subject of Esther all that was necessary to 
please the Court. 

So far Mademoiselle de Caylus. A French 



78 The Last Leaf 

historian of literature draws a pleasing picture 
of the old Racine superintending the preparation 
of Esther, 

giving advice full of sense and taste on the manner 
of reciting his verses, never breaking their harmony 
by a vulgar diction, nor hurting the sense by a wrong 
emphasis. What a charm must the verses where 
Esther recounts the history of her triumph over her 
rivals have had in the mouth of Mademoiselle de 
Veillanne, the prettiest and most graceful of the 
pupils of St. Cyr! How grand he must have been, 
when, with that noble figure which Louis XIV. ad- 
mired, he taught Mademoiselle de Glapion, whose 
voice went to the heart, to declaim the beautiful 
verses of the part of Mordecai ! 

The genius of Racine glows finely in Esther. 
In the choruses, the inspirations of the Hebrew 
prophets, framed as it were in a Greek mould, 
give impressive relief to the dialogue, as in 
Sophocles and ^schylus. It was played sev- 
eral times, and no favour was more envied at 
the Court than an invitation to the repre- 
sentations. The literature of the time has many 
allusions to them. The splendid world, in all 
its lace and powder, crowded to the quiet 
convent. The great soldiers, the wits, the beauti- 
full women were all there. The king and Madame 
de Maintenon sat in stiff dignity in the fore- 
ground. The appliances were worthy of the 
magnificent Court. In Oriental attire of silk 



In En^lisK ScKools 79 

sweeping to their feet, set off with pearl and 
gold, the loveliest girls of France declaimed and 
sang the sonorous verse. It is really one of the 
most innocent and charming pictures that has 
come down to us of this age, when so much was 
hollow, pompous, and cruel. 

Hamlet says to Polonius, " My lord, you 
played once in the university, you say." To 
which Polonius replies, " That I did, my lord, 
and was accounted a good actor. I did enact 
Julius Csesar. I was killed in the Capitol." Do 
not suppose, Fastidiosus, that the playing of 
Polonius was any such light affair as you and 
I used to be concerned in up in the fourth story 
of " Stoughton," when we were members of the 
Hasty Pudding. In the Middle Ages, in con- 
vents and churches, flourished the mysteries; 
but, says Warton, in the History of English 
Poetry, as learning increased, the practice of 
acting plays went over to the schools and uni- 
versities. Before the sixteenth century we may 
find traces of dramatic vitality among the great 
English seminaries; but if the supposition of 
Huber, in his account of English universities, is 
correct, the real founder of the college drama 
in England was a character no less dignified 
than its founder in Germany. Erasmus, as he 
sits enthroned in a scholar's chair in the market- 
place at Rotterdam, the buildings about leaning 
on their insecure foundations out of the per- 
pendicular, and the market-women, with their 



8o XHe Last Leaf 

apple-bloom complexions, crowding around him, 
shows a somewhat withered face and figure, less 
genial than the handsome Heidelberg professor 
as he stands at Worms. But it was Erasmus, 
probably, who, among many other things he did 
while in England, lent an important impulse to 
the acting of plays by students. He, no doubt, 
was no further interested than to have master- 
pieces of Greek and Latin drama represented, 
tliat the students might have exercise in those 
languages; but before the reign of Henry VIII. 
was finished, the practice was becoming pursued 
for other ends, and growing in importance. 
Gammer Gurton's 'Needle, long supposed to be 
the first English comedy, was first acted by 
students at Cambridge. That our more rollick- 
ing boys had their counterparts then, we may 
know from its rousing drinking-song, which the 
fellows rang out at the opening of the second 
act, way back there in 1551. The chorus is not 
yet forgotten: 

" Backe and side go bare, go bare, 
Booth foot and hand go colde; 
But, belly, God send thee good ale inoughe, 
Whether it be new or olde ! " 

For the most part, probably, the performances 
were of a more dignified character than this. 
Among the statutes of Trinity College, Cam- 
bridge, 1546, there is one entitled de prcpfectu 
ludorum qui imperator dicitur, under whose 



In En^lisK ScHools 8i 

direction and authority Latin comedies are to 
be exhibited in the hall at Christmas. This 
" imperator " must be a master of arts, and the 
society was to be governed by a set of laws 
framed in Latin verse. The authority of this 
potentate lasted from Christmas to Candlemas, 
during w^hich time six spectacles were to be 
represented. Dr. John Dee, a prodigy of that 
century, who might have been illustrious like 
Bacon almost, but who wasted his later years 
in astrological dreams, in his younger life, while 
Greek lecturer at Cambridge, superintended in 
the refectory of the college the representation 
of the Eiprfvj] of Aristophanes, with no mean 
stage adjuncts, if we may trust his own account. 
He speaks particularly of the performance of a 
" Scarabeus, his flying up to Jupiter's palace 
with a man and his basket of victuals on his 
back; whereat was great w^ondering and many 
vain reports spread abroad of the means how that 
was effected." The great Roger Ascham, too, 
has left an indirect testimony to the splendour 
with which the Cambridge performances at this 
time were attended. In a journey on the Con- 
tinent, wishing to express in the highest terms 
his sense of the beauty of Antwerp, he can say 
nothing stronger than that it as far surpasses 
other cities as the refectory of St. John's Col- 
lege at Cambridge, when adorned for the Christ- 
mas plays, surpasses its ordinary appearance. 
On these occasions, the most dignified personages 



82 THe Last Leaf 

of the University were invited, and at length, as 
was the German fashion, the representation of 
plays was adopted as part of the entertainment 
of visitors. In 1564, Qiieen Elizabeth visited 
Cambridge, and the picture transmitted to us 
of the festivities is full of brilliant lights. With 
the rest, five doctors of the University selected 
from all the colleges the youths of best appear- 
ance and address, who acted before the queen a 
series of plays of varied character, sometimes 
grave, sometimes gay, in part of classic, in part 
of contemporary authorship. The theatre for 
the time was no other place than the beautiful 
King's College chapel, across the entire width 
of which the stage was built. For light, the 
yeomen of the royal guard, their fine figures in 
brilliant uniform, stood in line from end to end 
of the chapel, each holding a torch. It was a 
superb scene, no doubt; the torches throwing 
their wavering glare against the tracery and the 
low, pointed arch of window and portal, so 
beautiful in this chapel, in the ruins of Kenil- 
worth, or wherever it appears; the great space 
filled with the splendour that Eoger Ascham 
thought so wonderful; and, among the glitter, 
the troop of handsome youths doing their best 
to please the sovereign. Froude gives a story 
from De Silva, the Spanish ambassador, which 
refiects so well the character of the time, and 
shows up boyish human nature with such amus- 
ing faithfulness, that I cannot omit it. When 



Queen ElizabetH at tKe Universities 83 

all was over, the students would not let well 
enough alone, but begged the tired queen to see 
one more play of their own devising, which they 
felt sure would give her special pleasure. The 
queen, however, departed, going ten miles on her 
journey to the seat of one of her nobility. The 
persistent boys followed her, and she granted 
them permission to perform before her in the 
evening. What should the unconscionable dogs 
do but drag in the bitter trouble of the time, 
and heedlessly trample on the queen's prejudices. 
The actors entered dressed like the bishops of 
Queen Mary, who were then in prison. Bonner 
carried a lamb, at which he rolled his eyes and 
gnashed his teeth. A dog brought up the rear, 
carrying the Host in his mouth. What further 
was to follow no one can say. The queen, who 
was never more than half a Protestant, and 
clung to the mass all the more devoutly because 
she was obliged to resign so much, filled the air 
with her indignation. She swore good round 
oaths, we may be sure, and left the room in a 
rage. The lights were put out, and the students 
made off in the dark as they could. 

The history of the drama at Oxford has epi- 
sodes of equal interest. The visitor who goes 
through the lovely Christ Church meadows to 
the Isis to see the boats, returning, will be sure 
to visit the refectory of Christ Church. The 
room is very flue in its proportions and decora- 
tion, and hung with the portraits of the mnlti- 



84 THe Last L-eaf 

tude of brilliant men who in their young days 
were Christ Church men. During all the cen- 
turies that the rich dark stain has been gather- 
ing upon the carved oak in the ceiling and 
T\ainscot, it has been the scene of banquets and 
]>ageants without number, at which the most 
illustrious characters of English history have 
figured. I doubt, however, if any of its associa- 
tions are finer than those connected with the 
student plays that have been performed here. 
Passing over occasions of this kind of less in- 
terest of which I find mention, in 1566 Elizabeth 
visited Oxford, to do honour to whom in this great 
hall of Christ Cliurch plays were given. Oxford 
was determined not to be outdone by what had 
happened at Cambridge two years before. From 
the accounts, the delight of the hearty queen 
must have been intense; and as she was never 
afraid to testify most frankly her genuine feel- 
ings, we may be sure the Oxford authorities and 
their pupils must have presented their entertain- 
ments with extraordinary pomp. The plays, as 
at Cambridge, were of various character, but the 
one that gave especial pleasure was an English 
piece having the same subject as the Knighte's 
Tale of Chaucer, and called Palamon and 
Arcite. It would be pleasant to know that the 
poet followed as far as possible the words of 
Chaucer. There is a fine incident narrated con- 
nected with the performance. In the scene of 
the chase, when 



nin^ James I. at Oxford 85 

" Theseus, with alle joye and blys, 
With his Ypolita, the faire queene, 
And Emelye, clothed al in greene, 
On hontyng be they riden ryally," 

a " cry of hounds " was counterfeited under the 
windows in the quadrangle. The students pre- 
sent thought it was a real chase, and were seized 
with a sudden transport to join the hunters. At 
this, the delighted queen, sitting in stiff ruff and 
farthingale among her maids of honour, burst 
out above all the tumult with " Oh, excellent ! 
These boys, in very truth, are ready to leap out 
of the windows to follow the hounds ! " When 
the play was over, the queen called up the poet, 
who was present, and the actors, and loaded 
them with thanks and compliments. 

When, forty years after, in 1605, the dull 
James came to Oxford, the poor boys had a 
harder time. A thing very noteworthy hap- 
pened when the king entered the city in his 
progress from Woodstock. If Warton's notion 
is correct, scarcely the iron cross in the pave- 
ment that marks the spot where the bishops were 
burned, or the solemn chamber in w^hich they were 
tried, yea, scarcely Guy Fawkes's lantern, which 
they show you at the Bodleian, or the Brazen Nose 
itself, are memorials as interesting as the arch- 
way leading into the quadrangle of St. John's 
College, under whose carving, quaint and grace- 
ful, one now gets the lovely glimpse into the 



86 THe Last Leaf 

green and bloom of the gardens at the back. At 
this gate, three youths dressed like witches met 
the king, declaring they were the same that once 
met Macbeth and Banquo, prophesying a king- 
dom to one and to the other a generation of 
monarchs, that they now" appeared to show the 
confirmation of the prediction. Warton's con- 
jecture is that Shakespeare heard of this, or per- 
haps was himself in the crowd that w^atched the 
boys as they came whirling out in their weird 
dance, and that then and there was conceived 
what was to become so mighty a product of the 
human brain, — Macbeth. 

King James, however, received it all coldly. 
The University, kindled by the traditions of 
Elizabeth's visit, did its best. Leland gives a 
glimpse of the stage arrangements in Christ 
Church Hall. Towards the end "was a scene 
like a wall, painted and adorned by stately 
pillars, which pillars would turn about, by reason 
whereof, with the help of other painted cloths, 
their stage did vary three times." But the king 
liked the scholastic hair-splitting with which he 
was elsewhere entertained better than the plays. 
In Christ Church Hall he yawned and even went 
to sleep, saying it was all mere childish amuse- 
ment. In fact, the poor boys had to put up 
with even a worse rebuff; the king spoke many 
words of dislike, and when, in one of the plays, 
a pastoral, certain characters came in somewhat 
scantily attired, the queen and maids of honour 



At Eton 87 

took great offence, in which the king, who was 
not ordinarily over-delicate, concurred. 

The practice of acting plays prevailed in the 
schools as well. The visitor to Windsor will 
remember in what peace, as seen from the great 
tower, beyond the smooth, dark Thames, the 
buildings of Eton lie among the trees. Cross- 
ing into the old town and entering the school 
precincts, where the stone stairways are worn 
by so many generations of young feet, and where 
on the play-ground the old elms shadow turf 
w^here so many soldiers and statesmen have been 
trained to struggle in larger fields, there is 
nothing after all finer than the great hall. In 
every age since the wars of the Roses, it has 
buzzed with the boisterous life of the privileged 
boys of England, who have come up afterward 
by the hundred to be historic men. There are 
still the fireplaces with the monogram of 
Henry VI., the old stained glass, the superb 
wood carving, the dais at the end. If there 
were no other memory connected with the mag- 
nificent hall, it would be enough that here, about 
1550, was performed by the Eton boys, Ralph 
Bolster Doister, the first proper English comedy, 
written by Nicholas Udal, then head-master, for 
the Christmas holidays. He had the name of 
being a stern master, because old Tusser has left 
it on record that Udal whipped him, — 

" for fault but small, 
or none at all." 



88 The Last Leaf 

But the student of our old literature, reading 
the jolly play, will feel that, though he could 
handle the birch upon occasion, there was in 
him a fine genial vein. This was the first Eng- 
lish comedy. The first English tragedy, too, 
Gorbodiic, was acted first by students, — this 
time students of law of the Inner Temple, — and 
the place of performance was close at hand to 
what one still goes to see in the black centre 
of the heart of London, those blossoming gardens 
of the Temple, verdant to-day as when the red- 
cross knights walked in them, or the fateful red 
and white roses were plucked there, or the voices 
of the young declaimers were heard from them, 
rolling out the turgid lines of Sackville's piece, 
the somewhat unpromising day-spring which a 
glorious sun-burst was to succeed. From Lin- 
coln's Inn, in 1613, when the Princess Elizabeth 
married the elector-palatine and went off to 
Heidelberg Castle, the students came to the 
palace with a piece written by Chapman, and 
the performance cost a thousand pounds. 

A famed contemporary of Udal was Richard 
Mulcaster, head-master of St. Paul's school, and 
afterward of Merchant Taylors', concerning 
whom we have, from delightful old Fuller, this 
quaint and naive description : 

In a morning he would exactly and plainly con- 
strue and parse the lesson to his scholars, which 
done, he slept his hour (custom made him critical 
to proportion it) in his desk in the school; but woe 



A.t "Westminster 89 

be to the scholar that slept the while. Awaking, he 
heard them accurately; and Atropos might be per- 
suaded to pity as soon as he to pardon where he 
found just fault. The prayers of cockering mothers 
prevailed with him just as much as the requests of 
indulgent fathers, rather increasing than mitigating 
his severity on their offending children. 

The name of this Rhadamanthus of the birch 
occurs twice in entries of Elizabeth's pay- 
master, as receiving money for plays acted 
before her; and a certain proficieney as actors 
possessed by students of St. John's College at 
Oxford is ascribed to training given by old Mul- 
caster at the Merchant Taylors' school. 

But no one of the great English public schools 
has enjoyed so long a fame in this regard as 
Westminster. According to Staunton, in his 
Great schools of England, Elizabeth desired to 
have plays acted by the boys, " Quo juventus tum 
actioni tum pronunciationi decenti melius se 
assuescat," that the youth might be better trained 
in proper bearing and pronunciation. The noted 
Bishop Atterbury wrote to a friend, Trelawney, 
Bishop of Winchester, concerning a performance 
here of Trelawney's son : " I had written to your 
lordship again on Saturday, but that I spent the 
evening in seeing Phormio acted in the college 
chamber, where, in good truth, my lord, Mr. 
Trelawney played Antipho extremely well, and 
some parts he performed admirably." In 1695, 
Dryden's play of Cleomenes was acted. Arch- 



90 THe Last Leaf 

bishop Markham, head-master one hundred years 
ago, gave a set of scenes designed bj Garrick. 
In our own day, Dr. Williamson, head-master in 
1828, drew attention in a pamphlet to the proper 
costuming of the performers ; and when, in 1847, 
there was a talk of abolishing the plays, a 
memorial signed by six hundred old " West- 
minsters '' was sent in, stating it as their " firm 
and deliberate belief, founded on experience and 
reflection, that the abolition of the Westminster 
play cannot fail to prove prejudicial to the in- 
terests and prosperity of the school." At the 
present time the best plays of Plautus and 
Terence are performed at Christmas in the 
school dormitory. 

It all became excessive, and in Cromwell's 
time, with the accession of the Puritans to 
power, like a hundred other brilliant traits of 
the old English life from whose abuse had grown 
riot, it was purged away. Ben Jonson, in The 
Staple of Neices, puts into the mouth of a sour 
character a complaint which no doubt was be- 
coming common in that day, and was probably 
well enough justified. 

" Thej make all their schollers play-boyes! Is 't 
not a fine sight to see all our children made enter- 
luders? Doe we pay our money for this? Wee 
send them to learne their grammar and their Terence 
and they learne their play-bookes. Well they talk 
we shall have no more parliaments, God blesse us! 
But an we have, I hope Zeale-of-the-land Buzzy, 



Milton at Cambridge 91 

and my gossip Rabby Trouble-Truth, will start up 
and see we have painfull good ministers to keepe 
schoole, and catechise our youth ; and not teach 'em 
to speake plays and act fables of false newes." 



Studying this rather unexplored subject, one gets 
many a glimpse of famous characters in interest- 
ing relations. Erasmus says that Sir Thomas 
More, " adolescens, comoediolas et scripsit et 
egit," and while a page with Archbishop More- 
ton, as plays were going on in the palace during 
the Christmas holidays, he would often, showing 
his schoolboy accomplishment, step on the stage 
without previous notice, and exhibit a part of 
his own which gave more satisfaction than the 
whole performance besides. 

In Leland's report of the theatricals where 
King James behaved so ungraciously, " the ma- 
chinery of the plays," he says, " was chiefly con- 
ducted by Mr. Jones, who undertook to furnish 
them with rare devices, but performed very little 
to what was expected." This is believed to have 
been Inigo Jones, who soon was to gain great 
fame as manager of the Court masques. The 
entertainment was probably ingenious and splen- 
did enough, but every one took his cue from the 
king's pettishness, and poor " Mr. Jones " had 
to bear his share of the ill-humour. 

In 1629 a Latin play was performed at Cam- 
bridge before the French ambassador. Among 
the student spectators sat a youth of twenty, 



92 THe Last Leaf 

with long locks parted in the middle falling 
upon his doublet, and the brow and eyes of the 
god Apollo, who curled his lip in scorn, and 
signalised himself by his stormy discontent. 
Here is his own description of his conduct : " I 
was a spectator ; tliey thought themselves gallant 
men, and I thought them fools ; they made sport, 
and I laughed; they mispronounced, and I mis- 
liked ; and to make up the iVtticism, they were out 
and I hissed." It was the young JMilton, in the 
year in which he wrote the Hymn on the Nativity. 

Do I need to cite other precedents for the pro- 
cedure at the Sweetbrier? I grant you it can- 
not be done from the practice of American col- 
leges. The strictest form of Puritanism stamped 
itself too powerfully upon our New England in- 
stitutions at their foundation, and has affected 
too deeply the newer seminaries elsewhere in 
the country, to make it possible that the drama 
should be anything but an outlaw here. Never- 
theless, at Harvard, Yale, and probably every 
considerable college of the country, the drama 
has for a long time led a clandestine life in 
secret student societies, persecuted or at best 
ignored by the college government, — an unwhole- 
some weed that deserved no tending, if it was 
not to be at once uprooted. 

I do not advocate, Fastidiosus, a return to the 
ancient state of things, which I doubt not was 
connected with many evils; but is there not rea- 
son to think a partial revival of the old customs 



Lessons of tKe Drama 93 

would be worth while? It was not for mirth 
merely that the old professors and teachers 
countenanced the drama. To the editors of 
David's Harp I have sent this passage from 
Milton, noblest among the Puritans, and have 
besought them to lay it before their consistory: 
" Whether eloquent and graceful incitements, 
instructing and bettering the nation at all oppor- 
tunities, not only in pulpits, but after another 
persuasive method, in theatres, porches, or what- 
ever place or way, may not win upon the people 
to receive both recreation and instruction, let 
them in authority consult." The German school- 
masters and professors superintended their boys 
in the representation of religious plays to in- 
struct them in the theology which they thought 
all-important; in the performance of Aristo- 
phanes and Lucian, Plautus and Terence, mainly 
in the hope of improving them in Greek and 
Latin: and when the plays were in the ver- 
nacular, it was often to train their taste, man- 
ners, and elocution. Erasmus and the Oxford 
and Cambridge authorities certainly had the 
same ideas as the Continental scholars. So the 
English schoolmasters in general, who also man- 
aged in the plays to give useful hints in all ways. 
For instance, Nicholas Udal, in the ingenious 
letter in Ralph Roister Doister, which is either 
loving or insulting according to the position of 
a few commas or periods, must have meant to 
enforce the doctrine of Chaucer's couplet : 



94 THe Last Leaf 

" He that pointeth ill, 
A good sentence may oft spill." 

Madame de Maintenon was persuaded that 
amusements of this sort have a value, " impart- 
ing grace, teaching a polite pronunciation, and 
cultivating the memory " ; and Racine commends 
the management of St. Cyr, where " the hours 
of recreation, so to speak, are put to profit by 
making the pupils recite the finest passages of 
the best poets." Here is the dramatic instinct, 
almost universal among young people, and which 
has almost no chance to exercise itself, except 
in the performance of the farces to which we 
are treated in " private theatricals." Can it not 
be put to a better use? It would be a cumbrous 
matter to represent or listen to the Aulularia, 
or the Miles OJoriosus, or the FAprfvrj^ in which 
Dr. Dee and his Scarabeus figured so success- 
fully. Tlie world is turned away from that ; ^ but 
here is the magnificent wealth of our own old 
dramatic literature, in which is contained the 
richest poetry of our language. It was never 
intended to be read, but to be heard in living 
presentment. For the most part it lies almost 
unknown, except in the case of Shakespeare, and 
liim the world knows far too little. Who does 
not feel what a treasure in the memory are pas- 
sages of fine poetry committed early in life? 

^ The developments of the last forty years show this 
judgment to be erroneous. 



THe Proficiency of Students 95 

Who can doubt the value to the bearing, the 
fine address, the literary culture of a youth of 
either sex that might come from the careful 
study and the attempt to render adequately a 
fine conception of some golden writer of our 
golden age, earnestly made, if only partially 
successful? 

I say only partially successful, but can you 
doubt the capacity of our young people to render 
in a creditable way the conceptions of a great 
poet? Let us look at the precedents again. 
When Mademoiselle de Caylus, in her account 
of St. Cyr, speaks of the representation of 
Andromaque, she writes, " It was only too well 
done." And prim Madame de Maintenon wrote 
to Racine : " Our young girls have played it so 
well they shall play it no more"; begging him 
to write some moral or historic poem. Hence 
came the beautiful masterpiece Esther, to which 
the young ladies seem to have done the fullest 
justice, for listen to the testimony. The bril- 
liant Madame de Lafayette wrote : " There was 
no one, great or small, that did not want to go, 
and this mere drama of a convent became the 
most serious affair of the court." That the 
admiration was not merely feigned because it 
was the fashion, here is the testimony of a 
woman of the finest taste, Madame de Sevigne, 
given in her intimate letters to her daughter, 
who, in these confidences, spared no one who 
deserved criticism: 



96 XHe Last Leaf 

The king and all the Court are charmed with 
Esther. The prince has wept over it. I cannot tell 
you how delightful the piece is. There is so perfect 
a relation between the music, the verses, the songs, 
and the personages, that one seeks nothing more. 
The airs set to the words have a beauty which can- 
not be borne without tears, and according to one's 
taste is the measure of approbation given to the 
piece. The king addressed me and said, " Madame, 
I am sure you have been pleased." I, without being 
astonished, answered, " Sire, I am charmed. What 
I feel is beyond words." The king said to me, 
" Racine has much genius." I said to him, " Sire, 
he has much, but in truth these young girls have 
much too; they enter into the subject as if they 
had done nothing else." " Ah ! as to that," said he, 
" it is true." And then his Majesty went away and 
left me the object of envy. 

Racine himself says in the Preface to Esther: 

The young ladies have declaimed and sung this 
work with so much modesty and piety, it has not 
been possible to keep it shut up in the secrecy of 
the institution ; so that a diversion of young people 
has become a subject of interest for all the Court; 

and what is still more speaking, he wrote at once 
the AthaJie, " la chef d'oeuvre de la poesie fran- 
(jaise," in the judgment of the French critics, to be 
rendered by the some young tyros. Wen, in 1556, 
in Christ Church Hall, Palamon and Arcite was 
finished, outspoken Queen Bess, with her frank 
eyes full of pleasure, declared " that Palamon 



TKe Drama at -AntiocK 97 

must have been in love indeed. Arcite was a 
right martial knight, having a swart and manly 
countenance, yet like a Venus clad in armour." 
To the son of the dean of Christ Church, the 
boy of fourteen, who played Emilie in the dress 
of a princess, her compliment was still higher. 
It was a present of eight guineas, — for the 
penurious sovereign, perhaps, the most emphatic 
expression of approval possible. 

Shall I admit for a moment that our American 
young folks have less grace and sensibility than 
the French girls, and the Oxford youths who 
pleased Elizabeth? Your face now, Fastidiosus, 
wears a frown like that of Rhadamanthus ; but 
I remember our Hasty-Pudding days, when you 
played the part of a queen, and behaved in your 
disguise like Thor, in the old saga, when he went 
to Riesenheim in the garb of Freya, and honest 
giants, like Thrym, were frightened back the 
whole width of the hall. Well, I do not censure 
it, and I do not believe you recall it with a sigh ; 
and the reminiscence emboldens me to ask you 
whether it would not be still better if our dear 
Harvard, say (the steam of the pudding infects 
me through twenty years), among the many new 
wrinkles she in her old age so appropriately con- 
tracts, should devote an evening of Commence- 
ment-time to a performance, by the students, 
under the sanction and direction of professors, 
of some fine old masterpiece? 

At our little Sweetbrier we have young men 

7 



98 The Last Leaf 

and young women together, as at Oberlin, An- 
tioch, and Massachusetts normal schools. I have 
no doubt our Hermione, when we gave the 
Winter's Tale, had all tlie charm of Mademoiselle 
de Veillanne, who played Esther at St. Cyr. I 
have no doubt our Portia, in the Mercliant of 
Venice, in the trial scene, her fine stature and 
figure robed in the doctor's long silk gown, which 
fell to her feet, and her abundant hair gathered 
out of sight into an ample velvet cap, so that 
she looked like a most wise and fair young 
judge, recited 

" The quality of mercy is not strained," 

in a voice as thrilling as that in which Made- 
moiselle de Glapion gave the part of Mordecai. 
I am sure Queen Elizabeth would think our 
young cavaliers, well-knit and brown from the 
baseball-field, " right martial knights, having 
swart and manly countenances." If she could 
have seen our Antoninus, when we gave the act 
from Massinger's most sweet and tender tragedy 
of tlie Virgin Martyr, or the noble Caesar, in 
our selections from Beaumont and Fletcher's 
False One, she would have been as ready with 
the guineas as she was in the case of the son 
of the dean of Christ Church. 

Our play at the last Commencement was Much 
Ado about Nothing. It was selected six months 
before, and studied with the material in mind, 
the students in the literature class, available 



1 



THe Drama at A.ntiocK 99 

for the different parts. What is there, thought 
I, in Beatrice — sprightliness covering intense 
womanly feeling — that our vivacious, healthful 
Ruth Brown cannot master; and what in Bene- 
dick, her masculine counterpart, beyond the 
power of Moore to conceive and render? It is 
chiefly girlish beauty and simple sweetness that 
Hero requires, so she shall be Edith Grey. 
Claudio, Leonato, Don John, Pedro, — ^^^e have 
clean-limbed, presentable fellows that will look 
and speak them all well; and as for lumbering 
Dogberry, Abbot, with his fine sense of the 
ludicrous, will carry it out in the best manner. 
A dash of the pencil here and there through the 
lines where Shakespeare was suiting his own time, 
and not the world as it was to be after three 
hundred refining years, and the marking out of 
a few scenes that could be spared from the 
action, and the play was ready; trimmed a little, 
but with not a whit taken from its sparkle or 
pathos, and all its lovelier poetry untouched. 

Then came long weeks of drill. In the 
passage, 

" O my lord, n 
When you went onward to this ended action, 
I looked upon her with a soldier's eye," etc., 

Claudio caught the fervour and softness at last, 
and seemed (it would have pleased Queen Bess 
better than Madame de Maintenon) like Pala- 
mon, in love indeed. Ursula and Hero rose 



loo TKe Last Lreaf 

easily to the delicate poetry of the passages 
that begin, 

" The pleasantest angling is to see the fish 
Cut with her golden oars the silver stream," 

and 

" Look where Beatrice like a lapwing runs." 

Pedro got to perfection his turn and gesture in 

" The wolves have preyed ; and look, the gentle day. 
Before the wheels of Phoebus, round about 
Dapples the drowsy east with spots of gray." 

With the rough comedy of Dogberry and the 
watchmen, that foils so well the sad tragedy of 
poor Hero's heart-breaking, and contrasts in its 
blunders with the diamond-cut-diamond dialogue 
of Benedick and Beatrice, there w^as less diffi- 
culty. From first to last, it was engrossing 
labour, as hard for the trainer as the trained, 
yet still delightful work; for what is a con- 
scientious manager, but an artist striving to per- 
fect a beautiful dramatic picture? The different 
personages are the pieces for his mosaic, who, in 
emphasis, tone, gesture, by-play, must be carved 
and filed until there are no flaws in the joining, 
and the shading is perfect. But all was ready 
at last, from the roar of Dogberry at the speech 
of Conrade, 



" Away ! you 're an ass ! you 're an ass 



t »» 



THe Drama at AntiocK loi 

to the scarcely articulate agony of Hero when 
she sinks to the earth at her lover's sudden 
accusation, 

" O Heavens ! how am I beset ! 
What kind of catechising call you this?" 

I fancy you ask, rather sneeringly, as to our 
scenery and stage adjuncts. Once, in the great 
court theatre at Munich, I saw Wagner's Rhein- 
Gold. The king was present, and all was done 
for splendour that could be done in that centre 
of art. When the curtain rose, the whole great 
river Rhine seemed to be flowing before you 
'across the stage, into the side of whose flood 
you looked as one looks through the glass side 
of an aquarium. At the bottom were rocks in 
picturesque piles; and, looking up through the 
tide to the top, as a diver might, the spectator 
saw the surface of the river, with the current 
rippling forward upon it, and the sunlight just 
touching the waves. Through the flood swam 
the daughters of the Rhine, sweeping fair arms 
backward as they floated, their drapery trailing 
heavy behind them, darting straight as arrows, 
or winding sinuously, from bottom to top, from 
side to side, singing wildly as the Lorelei. The 
scene changed, and it was the depths of the 
earth, red-glowing and full of gnomes. And a 
third time, after a change, you saw from moun- 
tain-tops the city which the giants had built in 
the heavens for the gods, — a glittering dome or 



102 THe Last Leaf 

pinnacle now and then breaking the line of white 
palaces, now and then a superb cloud floating 
before it, until, at last, a mist seemed to rise 
from valleys below, wrapping it little by little, 
till all became invisible in soft gradations of 
vapoury gloom, I shall never again see anything 
like that, where an art-loving court subsidises 
heavily scene-painter and machinist; but for all 
that, is it wise to have only sneers for what 
can be brought to pass with more modest means? 
Our hall at Sweetbrier is as large as the Christ 
Church refectory, and handsomely proportioned 
and decorated. A wide stage runs across the 
end. We found some ample curtains of crim- 
son, set off with a heavy yellow silken border of 
quite rich material, which had been used to drape 
a window that had disappeared in the course of 
repairs. This, stretched from side to side, made 
a wall of brilliant colour against the gray tint 
of the room ; and possibly Eoger Ascham, seeing 
our audience-room before and after the hanging 
of it, might have had a thought of Antwerp. The 
stage is the one thing in the world privileged 
to deceive. The most devoted reader of Ruskiu 
can tolerate shams here. The costumes were de- 
vised with constant reference to Charles Knight, 
and, to the eye, were of the gayest silk, satin, 
and velvet. There was, moreover, a profusion 
of jewels, which, for all one could see, sparkled 
with all the lustre of the great Florentine dia- 
mond, as you see it suspended above the imperial 



TKe Drama at A.ntiocH 103 

crowns in the Austrian Schatz-Kammer at 
Vienna. The contrasts of tint were well attended 
to. Pedro was in white and gold, Claudio in 
blue and silver, Leonato in red; while our 
handsome Benedick, a youth of dark Italian 
favour, in doublet of orange, a broad black 
velvet sash, and scarlet cloak, shone like a bird 
of paradise. 

There was a garden-scene, in the foreground 
of which, where the eyes of the spectators were 
near enough to discriminate, were rustic baskets 
with geraniums, fuchsias, and cactuses, to give 
a southern air. In the middle distance, armfuls 
of honeysuckle in full bloom were brought in 
and twined about white pilasters. There was 
an arbour overhung with heavy masses of the 
trumpet-creeper. A tall column or two sur- 
mounted with graceful garden-vases were cov- 
ered about with raspberry-vines, the stems of 
brilliant scarlet showing among the green. A 
thick clump of dogwoocP, whose large white blos- 
soms could easily pass for magnolias, gave back- 
ground. The green was lit with showy colour 
of every sort, — handfuls of nasturtiums, now and 
then a peony, larkspurs for blue, patches of 
poppies, and in the garden-vases high on the 
pillars (the imposition!) clusters of pink holly- 
hocks which were meant to pass for oleander- 
blossoms, and did, still, wet with the drops of the 
afternoon shower, which had not dried away when 
all was in place. When it comes to rain and dew- 



104 THe Last Leaf 

drops, dear Dr. Holmes, a " fresh-water college " 
has an advantage. First, it was given under gas ; 
then, the hall being darkened, a magnesium-light 
gave a moon-like radiance, in which the dew on 
the buds glistened, and the mignonette seemed 
to exhale a double perfume, and a dreamy melody 
of Mendelssohn sung by two sweet girl-voices 
floated out about the " iDleached bower," like a 
song of nightingales. Then toward the end 
came the scene of the chapel and Hero's tomb. 
!N^o lovelier form was ever sculptured than that 
of the beautiful Queen Louisa of Prussia, as she 
lies in the mausoleum at Charlottenburg, carved 
by Ranch, asleep on the tomb in white purity. 
To the eye, our Hero's tomb was just such a 
block of spotless marble seen against a back- 
ground of black, with just such a fair figure 
recumbent upon it, whose palms and lids and 
draping the chisel of an artist seemed to have 
folded and closed and hung, — all idealised again 
by the magic of the magnesium-light. As the 
crimson curtain was drawn apart, an organ 
sounded, and a far-away choir sent into the 
hush the Ave Verum of Mozart, low-breathed 
and solemn. 

It was not Munich, Fastidiosus. They were 
American young men and young women, with 
no resources but those of a rural college, and 
such as their own taste and the woods and 
gardens could furnish ; but the young men were 
shapely and intelligent, and the young women 



TKe Draxna at AntiocK 105 

had grace and brightness; their hearts were in 
it, and in the result surely there was a measure 
of " sweetness and light " for them and those 
who beheld. 

You fear it may beget in young minds a taste 
for the theatre, now hopelessly given over in 
great part to abominations. Why not a taste 
that will lift them above the abominations? Old 
Joachim Greff, schoolmaster at Dessau in 1545, 
who has a place in the history of German poetry, 
has left it on record that he trained his scholars 
to render noble dramas in the conscientious hope 
" that a little spark of art might be kept alive 
in the schools under the ashes of barbarism." 
" And this little spark," says Gervinus, " did 
these bold men, indeed, through two hundred 
years, keep honestly until it could again break 
out into flame." Instead of fearing the evil re- 
sult, rather would I welcome a revival of what 
Warton calls " this very liberal exercise." Were 
Joachim Greffs masters in our high schools and 
in the English chairs in our colleges, we might 
now and then catch a glimpse of precious things 
at present hidden away in never-opened store- 
houses, and see something done toward the 
development of a taste that should drive out 
the opera-boujfe. 

Here, at the end, Fastidiosus, is what I now 
shape in mind. Hippolyte Taine, in one of his 
rich descriptions, thus pictures the perform- 
ance of a masque: 



io6 TKe Last Leaf 

The elite of the kingdom is there upon the stage, 
the ladies of the court, the great lords, the queen, 
in all the splendour of their rank and their pride, in 
diamonds, earnest to display their luxury so that all 
the brilliant features of the nation's life are concen- 
trated in the price they give, like gems in a casket. 
What adornment! What profusion of magnificence! 
What variety ! What metamorphoses ! Gold sparkles, 
jewels emit light, the purple draping imprisons 
within its rich folds the radiance of the lustres. 
The light is reflected from shining silk. Threads 
of pearl are spread in rows upon brocades sewed 
with thread of silver. Golden embroideries inter- 
twine in capricious arabesques, costumes, jewels, 
appointments so extraordinarily rich that the stage 
seems a mine of glory. 

The fashionable world of our time has little 
taste for such pleasures. This old splendour 
we cannot produce; but the words which the 
magnificent lords and ladies spoke to one an- 
other as they blazed, were those that make up 
the Poetry of Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess, 
Ben Jonson's Sad Shepherd, and, finest of all, 
the Comus of Milton. They are the most match- 
less frames of language in which sweet thoughts 
and fancies were ever set. After all, before this 
higher beauty, royal pomp even seems only a 
coarse excrescence, and all would be better if 
the accessories of the rendering were very simple. 
Already in my mind is the grove for Comus 
designed; the mass of green which shall stand 
in the centre, the blasted trunk that shall rise 



Milton's Coxnvis 107 

for contrast to one side, and the vine that shall 
half conceal the splintered summit, the banks of 
wild-flowers that shall be transferred, the light 
the laboratory shall yield us to make all seem 
as if seen through enchanter's incense. I have 
in mind the sweet-voiced girl w^ho shall be the 
lost lady and sing the invocation to Sabrina; 
the swart youth who shall be the magician and 
say the lines, 

" At every fall, smoothing the raven down 
Of darkness till it smiled"; 

and the golden-haired maid who shall glide in 
and out in silvery attire, as the attendant spirit. 
Come, Fastidiosus, — I shall invite too the editors 
of DavicVs Harp, — and you shall all own the 
truth of Milton's own words, " that sanctity and 
virtue and truth herself may in this wise be 
elegantly dressed," when the attendant spirit 
recites : 

" Now my task is smoothly done, 
I can fly or I can run 
Quickly to the green earth's end, 
Where the bowed welkin low doth bend; 
And from thence can soar as soon 
To the corners of the moon. 
Mortals that would follow me, 
Love virtue ; she alone is free. 
She can teach ye how to climb 
Higher than the si)hery chime; 
Or if virtue feeble were, 
Heaven itself would stoop to her." 



CHAPTER IV 

THE GIANT IN THE SPIKED HELMET 

IN January of 1870, having decided to teach 
rather than preach, I embarked for Ger- 
many to enjoy a year of foreign study. Like 
Western professors in general (to borrow the 
witticism of President Eliot) I occupied not 
so much a chair as a sofa, and felt that I 
needed enlargement for the performance of my 
functions. 

I think I saw a certain caricature first in 
Munich at the end of July, then in two or three 
Swiss cities, then in Paris at the end of August, 
then in Brussels and London; for it was popular, 
and the print-shops had it everywhere. It was 
a map of Europe where the different countries 
were represented by comical figures, each meant 
to hit off the pecularities of the nation it stood 
for, according to popular apprehension. For 
Prussia there was an immense giant, one of 
wliose knees was on the stomach of Austria 
represented as a lank figure utterly prostrate, 
while the other foot threatened to crush South- 
western Germany. One hand menaced France, 

1 08 



A. Good Caricatvire 109 

whose outline the designer had managed, to give 
rudely in the figure of a Zouave in a fierce atti- 
tude; and the other was thrust toward Russia, 
a huge colossus with Calmuck dress and features. 
The most conspicuous thing in the giant's dress 
was a helmet with a spike projecting from the 
top, much too large for the head of the wearer, 
and therefore falling over his eyes until they 
were almost blinded by it. The style of the 
helmet was that of the usual head-dress of the 
Prussian soldier. The caricature generally was 
not bad, and the hit at Prussia, half crushed 
and blinded under the big helmet, was par- 
ticularly good. Throughout her whole history 
Prussia is either at war, or getting ready for 
war, or lying exhausted. through wounds and re- 
covering strength. In Prussia you found things 
of pugnacious suggestion always, and in the most 
incongruous connections. Study the schools, and 
there was something to call up the soldier. 
Study the church, and even there was a burly 
polemic quality which you can trace back from 
to-day to the time when the Prussian bishops 
were fighting knights. Study the people in their 
quietest moods, in their homes, among their 
recreations, indeed, among the graves of those 
they honour as the greatest heroes, and you 
found the same overhanging shadow of war. 
This predominant martial quality showed itself 
in ways sometimes brutal, sometimes absurd, 
sometimes sublime. 



no THe Last L,eaf 

I visited Prussia at a time of entire peace, 
for at mj departure I crossed the frontier (or 
that of the North German Confederation, the 
whole of which, for convenience's sake, we will 
call Prussia) on the very day when King Wil- 
liam was shouldering aside so roughly at Ems 
Benedetti and the famous French demands. The 
things to which I gave attention for the most 
part were the things which belong to peace; yet 
as I arrange my recollections I find that some- 
thing military runs through the whole of them. 
As one's letters when he has read them are filed 
away on the pointed wire standing on the desk, 
so as regards my Prussian experiences every- 
thing seems to have been filed away on the spike 
of a helmet. 

Going out early one May morning to get my 
first sight of Berlin, I stood presently in a broad 
avenue. In the centre ran a wide promenade 
lined with tall, full-foliaged trees, with a crowded 
roadway on each side bordered by stately build- 
ings. Close by me a colossal equestrian statue 
in bronze towered up till the head of the rider 
was on a level with the eaves of the houses. 
The rider was in cocked hat, booted and spurred, 
the eye turned sharp to the left as if recon- 
noitring, the attitude alert, life-like, as if he 
might dismount any moment if he chose. In 
the distance down the long perspective of trees 
was a lofty gate supported by columns, with a 
figure of Victory on the top in a chariot drawn 



TKe Aspect of Berlin ill 

by horses. Close at hand again, under the porch 
of a square strong structure, stood two straight 
sentinels. An officer passed in a carriage on the 
farther side of the avenue. Instantly the two 
sentinels stepped back in concert as if the same 
clock-work regulated their movements, brought 
their shining pieces with perfect precision to 
the " present," stood for an instant as if hewn 
from stone, the spiked helmets above the blond 
faces inclining backward at the same angle, then 
precisely together fell into the old position. The 
street was " Unter den Linden." The tall 
statue was the memorial of Frederick the Great. 
The gate do^Ti the long vista was the Branden- 
burger Thor, surmounted by the charioted Vic- 
tory which l^apoleon carried to Paris after Jena 
and which came back after Waterloo. The solid 
building was the palace of iron-grey old King 
William; and when the clock-work sentinels went 
through their salute, I got my first sight of that 
famous Prussian discipline, against which be- 
fore the summer was through supple France was 
to crush its teeth all to fragments, like a viper 
that has incautiously bitten at a file. 

There never was a place with aspect more 
military than Berlin even in peaceful times. In 
many quarters towered great barracks for the 
troops. The public memorials were almost ex- 
clusively in honour of gTeat soldiers. There 
were tall columns, too, to commemorate victories 
or the crushing out of revolutionary spirit; 



112 The Last Leaf 

rarely, indeed, in comparison, a statue to a man 
of scientific or literary or artistic eminence. 
Frederick sits among the tree-tops of Unter den 
Linden, and about his pedestal are life-size 
figures of the men of his age whom Prussia 
holds most worthy of honour. At the four 
corners ride the Duke of Brunswick and cunning 
Prince Heinrich, old Ziethen and fiery Seydlitz. 
Between are a score or more of soldiers of lesser 
note, only soldiers, spurred and sabre-girt, — ex- 
cept at the very back ; and there, just where the 
tail of Frederick's horse droops over, stand — 
whom think you? — no others than Lessing, critic 
and poet, most gifted and famous; and Kant, 
peer of Plato and Bacon, one of the most gifted 
brains of all time. Just standing room for them 
among the hoofs and uniforms at the tail of 
Frederick's horse! Every third man one met in 
Berlin was a soldier off duty. Batteries of steel 
guns rolled by at any time, obedient to their 
bugles. Squadrons of Uhlans in uniforms of 
green and red, the pennons fluttering from the 
ends of their lances, rode up to salute the king. 
Each day at noon, through the roar of the streets, 
swelled the finest martial music; first a grand 
sound of trumpets, then a deafening roll from 
a score of brazen drums. A heavy detachment 
of infantry wheeled out from some barracks, 
ranks of strong brown-haired young men stretch- 
ing from sidewalk to sidewalk, neat in every 
thread and accoutrement, with the German gift 



XHe Main Guard I13 

for music all, as the stride told with which they 
beat out upon the pavement the rhythm of the 
march, dropping sections at intervals to do the 
unbroken guard duty at the various posts. Fre- 
quently whole army corps gathered to manceuvre 
at the vast parade-ground by the Kreuzberg in 
the outskirts. On Unter den Linden is a strong 
square building, erected, after the model of a 
Roman fortress, to be the quarters of the main 
guard. The officers on duty at Berlin came here 
daily at noon to hear military music and for a 
half-hour's talk. They came always in full uni- 
form, a collection of the most brilliant colours, 
hussars in red, blue, green, and black, the king's 
body-guard in white with braid of yellow and 
silver, in helmets that flashed as if made from 
burnished gold, crested with an eagle with out- 
spread wings. The men themselves were the 
handsomest one can see; figures of the finest 
symmetry and stature, trained by every athletic 
exercise, and the faces often so young and 
beautiful! Counts and barons were there from 
Pomerania and old Brandenburg, where the 
Prussian spirit is most intense, and no nobility 
is nobler or prouder. They were blue-eyed and 
fair-haired descendants perhaps of the chieftains 
that helped Herman overcome Varus, and whose 
names may be found five hundred years back 
among the Deutsch Bitters that conquered North- 
ern Europe from heathendom, and thence all the 
way down to now, occurring in martial and 

8 



114 The Last Leaf 

princely connection. It was the acme of martial 
splendour. 

"But liow do you bear it all?" you say to 
your Prussian friend, with whom you stand look- 
ing on at the base of Btilow's statue. " Is not 
this enormous preparation for bloodshed some- 
thing dreadful? Then the tax on the country 
to support it all, the withdrawing of such a mul- 
titude from the employments of peace." Your 
friend, who had been a soldier himself, would 
answer : " We bear it because we must. It is 
the price of our existence, and we have got used 
to it; and, after all, with the hardship come 
great benefits. Every able-bodied young Prus- 
sian must serve as a soldier, be he noble or low- 
born, rich or poor. If he cannot read or write, 
he must learn. He must be punctual, neat, tem- 
perate, and so gets valuable habits. His body 
is trained to be strong and supple. Shoemaker 
and banker's son, count, tailor, and farmer 
march together, and community of feeling comes 
about. The great traditions of Prussian history 
are the atmosphere they breathe, and they be- 
come patriotic. The soldier must put off marry- 
ing, perhaps half forget his trade, and come into 
life poor ; for who can save on nine cents a day, 
with board and clothes? But it is a wonder if 
he is not a healthy, well-trained, patriotic man." 
So talked your Prussian; and however much of 
a peace-man you might be, you could not help own- 
ing there was some truth in it. If you bought a 



XKe Arsenal 115 

suit of clothes, the tailor jumped up from his 
cross-legged position, prompt and full-chested, 
with tan on his face he got in campaigning; and 
it is hard to say he had lost more than he gained 
in his army training. If you went into a school, 
the teacher, with a close-clipped beard and vigor- 
ous gait, who had a scar on his face from Konig- 
gratz, seemed none the worse for it, though he 
might have read a few books the less and lost 
his student pallor. At any rate, bad or good, 
so it was; and so, said the Prussian, it must 
be. Eternal vigilance and preparation ! I went 
in one day to the arsenal. The flags which Prus- 
sian armies had taken from almost every nation 
in Europe were ranged against the walls by the 
hundred; shot-shattered rags of silk, white stand- 
ards of Austria embroidered with gold, Bavaria's 
blue checker, above all the great Napoleonic sym- 
bol, the IST surrounded by its wreath. This was 
the memorable tapestry that hung the walls, 
and opposite glittered the waiting barrels and 
bayonets till one could almost believe them con- 
scious, and burning to do as much as the flint- 
locks that won the standards. There was a 
needle-gun there or somewhere for every able- 
bodied man, and somewhere else uniform and 
equipments. When I landed in February on the 
bank of the Weser, the most prominent object 
was the redoubt with the North German flag. 
When in midsummer I crossed the Bavarian 
frontier among a softer people, the last marked 



Ii6 THe Last Leaf 

object was the old stronghold of Coburg, bat- 
tered by siege after siege for a thousand years. 
It was the spiked helmet at the entrance and 
again at the exit ; and from entrance to exit, few 
places or times were free from some martial 
suggestion. It was a nation that had come to 
power mainly through war, and been schooled 
into the belief that its mailed fists alone could 
guarantee its life. 

I visited a primary school. The little boys 
of six came with knapsacks strapped to their 
backs for their books and dinners, instead of 
satchels. At the tap of a bell they formed them- 
selves into column and marched like little vete- 
rans to the schoolroom door. I visited a school 
for boys of thirteen or fourteen. Casting my 
eyes into the yard, I saw the spiked helmet in 
the shape of the half-military manceuvres of a 
class which the teacher of gymnastics was train- 
ing for the severer drill of five or six years later. 
I visited the " prima," or upper class of a gym- 
nasium, and here was the spiked helmet in a 
connection that seemed at first rather irreverent, 
xVfter all, however, it was only thoroughly Prus- 
sian, and deserved to be looked upon as a 
comical incongruity rather than gravely blamed. 
A row of cheap pictures hung side by side upon 
the wall. First Luther, the rougher characteris- 
tics of the well-known portrait somewhat ex- 
aggerated. The shoulders were even larger than 
common. The bony buttresses of the forehead 



Militarism in tHe ScHools 117 

over the eyes, too, as they rose above the strong 
lower face, were emphasised, looking truly as 
though, if tongue and pen failed to make a way, 
the shoulders could push one, and, if worse came 
to worst, the head would butt one. Next to 
Luther was a head of Christ; then in the same 
line, with nothing in the position or quality of 
the pictures to indicate that the subjects were 
any less esteemed, a row of royal personages, 
whose military trappings were made particularly 
plain. It was all characteristic enough. The 
Reformer's figure stood for the stalwart Pro- 
testantism of the Prussian character, still living 
and militant in a way hard for us to imagine; 
the portraits of the royal soldiers stood for its 
combative loyalty, ready to meet anything for 
king and fatherland ; and the head of Christ for 
its zealous faith, which, however it may have 
cooled away among some classes of the people, 
was still intense in the nation at large. I visited 
the best school for girls in Berlin, and it was 
singular to find the spiked helmet, among those 
retiring maidens even, and this time not hung 
upon the wall nor outside in the yard. The 
teacher of the most interesting class I visited 
— a class in German literature — was a man of 
forty-five, of straight, soldierly bearing, a grey, 
martial moustache, and energetic eye. He told 
me, as we walked together in the hall, waiting 
for the exercise to commence, that he had been 
a soldier, and it so happened that among the 



Ii8 The Last Leaf 

ballads in the lesson for that day was one in 
honour of the Prussian troops at Rossbach. 
Over this the old soldier broke out into an ani- 
mated lecture, which grew more and more earnest 
as he went forward; he showed how the idea of 
faithfulness to duty had become obscured, but 
was enforced again by the philosopher Kant in 
his teaching, and then brought into practice 
by the great Frederick. The veteran plainly 
thought there was no duty higher than that 
owed to tlie schivarzer Adler, the black eagle of 
Prussia. Then came an account of the French 
horse before Rossbach; how they rode out from 
Weimar, the troopers, before they went, ripping 
open the beds on which they had slept and scat- 
tering the feathers to the wind to plague the 
housewives, — a piece of ruthlessness that came 
home thoroughly to the young housekeepers ; then 
how der alte Frits, lying in wait behind Janus 
Hill, with General Seydlitz and Field-marshal 
Keith, suddenly rushed out and put them all 
to rout. The soldier was in a fever of patriot- 
ism and rage against the French before his de- 
scription was finished, and the faces of the girls 
kindled in response. " They will some time," I 
thought, " be lovers, wives, mothers of Prussian 
soldiers themselves, and this training will keep 
alive in the home the national fire." 

Admirable schools they all were, the presence 
of the spiked helmet notwithstanding, and crown- 
ing them in the great Prussian educational sys- 



TKe Universities , 1 19 

tern came the famous universities. That at Ber- 
lin counted, its students by thousands, its pro- 
fessors by hundreds. There was no branch of 
human knowledge without its teacher. One 
could study Egyptian hieroglyphics or the As- 
syrian arrow-head inscriptions. A new pimple 
could hardly break out on the blotched face of 
the moon, without a lecture from a professor 
next day to explain the theory of its develop- 
ment. The poor earthquakes were hardly left 
to shake in peace an out-of-the-way strip of 
South American coast or Calabrian plain, but 
a German professor violated their privacy, un- 
dertook to see whence they came and whither 
they went, and even tried, to predict when they 
would go to shaking again. The vast building 
of the University stood on Unter den Linden, 
opposite the palace of the king. Large as it 
was, its halls were crowded at the end of every 
hour by the thousand or two of young men, who 
presently disappeared within the lecture-rooms. 
Here in past years had been Hegel and Fichte, 
the brothers Grimm, the brothers Humboldt, 
Niebuhr, and Carl Ritter. Here in my time, 
w^ere Lepsius and Curtius, Virchow and Hoff- 
man, Ranke and Mommsen, — the world's first 
scholars in the past and present. The student 
selected his lecturers, then went day by day 
through the semester to the plain lecture-rooms, 
taking notes diligently at benches which had 
been whittled well by his predecessors, and w'here 



120 TKe Last Leaf 

he too most likely carved liis own autograph and 
perhaps the name of the dear girl he adored, 
— for Yankee boys have no monopoly of the 
jack-knife. 

Where could one find the spiked helmet in the 
midst of the scholastic quiet and diligence of a 
German university? It was visible enough in 
more ways than one. Here was one manifesta- 
tion. Run down the long list of professors and 
teachers in the Anzeiger, and you would find 
somewhere in the list the Fechtmeister, instructor 
in fighting, master of the sword exercise, and he 
was pretty sure to be one of the busiest men 
in the company. To most German students, a 
sword, or Schldger^ was as necessary as pipe or 
beer-mug; not a slender fencing-foil, with a but- 
ton on the point, and slight enough to snap with 
a vigorous thrust, but a stout blade of tempered 
steel, ground sharp. With these weapons the 
students perpetrated savageries, almost unre- 
buked, which struck an American with horror. 
Duels were of frequent occurrence, taking place 
sometimes at places and on days regularly set 
apart for the really bloody work. The fighters 
were partially protected by a sort of armour, and 
the wounds inflicted were generally more ghastly 
than dangerous; though a son of Bismarck was 
said to have been nearly killed at Bonn a few 
years before, and there was sometimes serious 
maiming. Perhaps one may say it was nothing 
but very rough play, but it was the play of young 



TKe Fkoyal Mtaseum 121 

savages, whose sport was nothing to them with- 
out a dash of cruel rage. The practice dates 
from the time when the Germans wore wolf-skins, 
and were barbarians roaring in their woods. 
Perhaps the university authorities found it too 
inveterate a thing to be done away with ; per- 
haps, too, they felt, thinking as it were under 
their spiked helmets, that after all it had a 
value, making the young men cool in danger 
and accustoming them to weapons. We, after 
all, cannot say too much. Often our young 
American students in Germany take to the 
Schldger as gracefully and naturally as game- 
cocks to spurs. The most noted duellist at one 
of the universities that winter was a burly young 
Westerner, who had things at first all his own 
way. A still burlier Prussian from Tubingen, 
however, appeared at last, and so carved our 
valiant borderer's face, that thereafter with its 
criss-cross scars it looked like a well-frequented 
skating-ground. Football, too, in America pro- 
bably kills and maims more in a year than all 
the German duels. 

To crown all, the schools and University at 
Berlin were magnificently supplemented in the 
great Museum, a vast collection, where one 
might study the rise and progress of civilisation 
in every race of past ages that has had a history, 
and the present condition of perhaps every peo- 
ple, civilised or wild, under the sun. In one 
great hall you were among the satin garments 



122 THe Last Leaf 

and lacquered furniture of China; in another 
there was the seal-skin work of the Esquimaux 
stitched with sinew. Now you sat in a Tartar 
tent, now among the war-clubs, the conch-shell 
trumpets, the drums covered with human skin 
of the Polynesians. Here it was the feathery 
finery of the Caribs, here the idols and trinkets 
of the negroes of Soudan. There too, in still 
other halls, was the history of our own race; 
the maces the Teutons and ISTorsemen fought 
with, the tores of twisted gold they wore about 
their necks, the sacrificial knives that slew the 
victims on the altars of Odin; so, too, what our 
fathers have carved and spun, moulded, cast, and 
portrayed, until we took up the task of life. In 
another place you found the great collection 
made in Egypt by Lepsius. The visitor stood 
within the fac-simile of a temple on the banks 
of the Nile. On the walls and lotus-shaped 
columns were processions of dark figures at the 
loom, at the work of irrigation, marching as 
soldiers, or mourners at funerals, — exact copies 
of the original delineations. There were sphinx 
and obelisk, coflns of kings, mummies of priest 
and chieftain, the fabrics they wore, the gems 
they cut, the scrolls they engrossed, the tomb in 
which they were buried. Stepping into another 
section, you were in Assyria, with the alabaster 
lions and plumed genii of the men of Nineveh 
and Babylon. The walls again were brilliant, 
now with the splendour of the palaces of Nebu- 



THe R.oyal Mviseum 123 

chadnezzar; the captives building temples, the 
chivalry sacking cities, the princes on their 
thrones. Here too was Etruria revealed in her 
sculpture and painted vases; and here too the 
whole story of Greece. Passing through these 
wonderful halls, you reviewed a thousand years 
and more, almost from the epoch of Cadmus, 
through the vicissitudes of empire and servitude, 
until Constantinople was sacked by the Turks. 
The rude Pelasgic altar, the sculptured god of 
Praxiteles, then down through the ages of decay 
to the ugly painting of the Byzantine monk in 
the Dark Ages. So too the whole history of 
Borne ; the long heave of the wave from Romulus 
until it becomes crested with the might and 
beauty of the Augustan age; the sad subsidence 
from that summit to Goth and Hun. There was 
architecture which the eyes of the Tarquins saw, 
there were statues of the great consuls of the 
Republic, the luxury of the later Empire. You 
saw it not only in models, but sometimes in 
actual relics. One's blood thrilled when he stood 
before a statue of Julius Csesar, whose sculptor, 
it is reasonable to believe, wrought from the life. 
It was broken and discoloured, as it came from 
the Italian ruin where it had lain since the 
barbarian raids. But the grace had not left the 
toga folded across the breast, nor was the fine 
Roman majesty gone from the head and face, — 
a head small, but high, with a full and ample 
brow, a nose with the true eagle curve, and thin. 



124 The Last Leaf 

firm lips formed to command ; a statue most sub- 
duing in its simple dignity and pathetic in its 
partial ruin. And all this was free to the world 
as the air of heaven almost. No fee for ad- 
mission; the only requisitions, not to handle, 
orderly behaviour, and decent neatness in attire. 
Here I saw too, when I ascended the steps 
between the great bronze groups of statuary as 
I entered, and again the last thing as I left, the 
spiked helmet on the head of the stiff sentinel 
always posted at the door. 

The German home was affectionate and genial. 
The American, properly introduced, was sure of 
a generous welcome, for it was hard to find a 
German who had not many relatives beyond the 
Atlantic. There were courteous observances 
which at first put one a little aback. Sneezing, 
for instance, was not a thing that could be done 
in a corner. If the family were a bit old- 
fashioned, you would be startled and abashed by 
hearing the ^^ prosits '' and " Oesimdheits " from 
the company, wishes that it might be for your 
advantage and health sonorously given, with 
much friendly nodding in your direction. This 
is a curious survival of an old superstition that 
sneezing perhaps opened a passage through which 
an evil spirit might enter the body. As you rose 
from the table it was the old-fashioned way, too, 
to go through with a general hand-shaking, and 
a wish to every one that the supper might set 
well. The Germans are long-lived, and almost 



Militarism in tKe Home 125 

every domestic hearthstone supports the easy- 
chairs of grandparents. Grandfather was often 
fresh and cheerful, the oracle and comforter of 
the children, treated with deference by those 
grown up, and presented to the guest as the 
central figure of the home. As the younger ones 
dropped off to bed and things grew quieter, 
grandfather's chair was apt to be the centre 
toward which all tended, and, of course, the old 
man talked about his youth. Here are the 
reminiscences I heard once at the end of a merry 
evening, and at other times I heard something 
not unlike : " Children and grandchildren and 
guest from over the sea, when I was a boy, Prus- 
sia was struggling with the first l^apoleon ; and 
when I was eighteen I marched myself under 
Blticher beyond the Rhine. Sometimes we went 
on the run, sometimes we got lifts in relays of 
waggons, and so I have known the infantry even 
to make now and then fifty miles a day. Mat- 
ters were pressing, you see {sehen Sie ^mal). At 
last we crossed at Coblentz, and got from there 
into Belgium the first days of June. We met 
the French at Ligny, — a close, bitter fight, — and 
half my battalion were left behind there where 
they had stood. We were a few paces off, posted 
in a graveyard, when the French cavalry rode 
over old Marshal Vorwarts, lying under his 
horse. I saw the rush of the French, then the 
countercharge of the Prussian troopers when 
they missed the General and drove the enemy 



126 XHe Lrdst Leaf 

back till they found him again ; though what it 
all meant we never knew till it was over. Then, 
after mighty little rest, we marched fast and far, 
with cannon-thunder in our ears in a constant 
mutter, always growing louder, until in the 
afternoon we came at a quickstep through a 
piece of woods out upon the plain by Waterloo, 
where they had been fighting all day. Our feet 
sucked in the damp ground, the wet grain 
brushed our knees, as our compact column spread 
out into more open order and went into fire. 
What a smoke there was about La Haye Sainte 
and Hougomont, Avith now lines of red infantry, 
or a column in dark blue, or a mass of flashing 
cuirassiers hidden for a moment, then reappear- 
ing! It was take and give, hot and heavy, for 
an hour or so about Planchenoit. A ball grazed 
my elbow and another went through my cap; 
but at sunset the French were broken, and we 
swept after the rout as well as we could through 
the litter, along the southward roads. We were 
at a halt for a minute, I remember, when a rider 
in a chapeau with a plume, and a hooked nose 
underneath, trotted up, wrapped in a military 
cloak, and somebody said it was Wellington." 
Grandfather was sure to be at a white heat be- 
fore he had finished, and so, too, his audience. 
The athletic student grandson, with a deep scar 
across his cheek from a Schlager cut, rose and 
paced the room. The Frdulein, his sister, to 
whom the retired grenadier has told the story 



XHe Honoured Graves 127 

of the feather-beds at Weimar, showed in her 
eyes she remembered it all. " Yes, friend Ameri- 
can ! " breaks in the father of the family, " and 
it all must be done over again. Sooner or later 
it must come, a great struggle with France ; the 
Latin race or the Teutonic, which shall be su- 
preme in Europe? We are ready now; arsenals 
filled, horses waiting, equipments for everybody. 
Son Fritz there has his uniform ready, and some- 
where there is one for me. Donnerwetter ! If 
they get into Prussia, they '11 find a tough old 
Landsturm! Only let Vater Wilhelm turn his 
hand, and to-morrow close upon a million trained 
and well-armed troops could be stepping to the 
drum." It was an evening at the end of June. 
Napoleon was having the finishing touches put 
to the new Opera House at Paris, thinking, so 
far as the world could tell, of nothing more im- 
portant than how many imperial eagles it would 
do to put along the cornice. King William was 
packing for Ems, designing to be back at the 
peaceful unveiling of his father's statue the first 
week in August. Bismarck was at his Pome- 
ranian estate, in poor health, it was said, plot- 
ting nothing but to circumvent his bodily trouble. 
In less than a month full-armed Prussia was on 
the march. I could understand the readiness, 
when I thought of the spiked helmet I had seen 
in the Prussian home that quiet summer night. 

The German Friedliof, or burying-ground, had 
never the extent or magnificence of some Ameri- 



128 The Last Leaf 

can cemeteries. Even near the cities it was 
small and quiet, showing, however, in the well- 
kept mounds and stones there was no want of 
care. Every old church, too, was floored with 
the memorial tablets of those buried beneath, and 
bare upon walls and columns monuments in the 
taste of the various ages that have come and 
gone since the church was built. Graves of 
famous men, here as everywhere, were places of 
pilgrimage, and here as everywhere to see which 
are the most honoured tombs, was no bad way 
of judging the character of the people. Among 
the scholars of Germany there have been no 
greater names than those of Jakob and Wilhelm 
Grimm, brothers not far apart in the cradle, 
not far apart in death, who lived and worked 
together their full threescore years and ten. 
They were two wonderful old men, with faces 
— as I saw them together in a photograph shown 
me by Hermann Grimm, the well-known son of 
Wilhelm — full of intellectual strength,, and yet 
with the sweetness and innocence of children. 
They lie now side by side in the Matthai Kirch- 
hof at Berlin, in graves precisely similar, with a 
lovely rose-bush scattering petals impartially on 
the turf above both, and solid twin stones at 
their heads, meant to endure apparently as long 
as their fame. Hither come a large and various 
company of pilgrims, — children who love the 
brothers Grimm for their fairy-tales, young stu- 
dents who have been kindled by their example. 



XHe Honoured Graves 129 

and grey old scholars who respect their achieve- 
ments as the most marvellous work of the mar- 
vellous German erudition. The little North 
German city, Weimar, is closely associated with 
the great literary men of the last hundred years. 
Here several of them accomplished their best 
work under the patronage of an enlightened 
duke, and finally found their graves. An at- 
mosphere of reverend quiet seemed to hang over 
it as I walked through its shaded streets, — 
streets where there is never bustle, and which 
appear to be always remembering the great men 
who have walked in them. In the burying- 
ground in the outskirts I found the mausoleum 
of the ruling house, a decorated hall of marble 
with a crypt underneath in which are the cof&ns. 
The members of the Saxe-Weimar family for 
many generations are here; the warlike ancestor 
with his armour rusting on the dusty lid, grand- 
duke and duchess, and the child that died before 
it attained the coronet. But far more interest- 
ing than any of these are two large plain caskets 
of oak, lying side by side at the foot of the 
staircase by which you descend. In these are 
the bones of Goethe and Schiller. The heap of 
wreaths, some of them still fresh, which lay on 
the tops, the number on the coffin of Schiller 
being noticeably the larger, showed how green 
their memory had been kept in the heart of the 
nation. I was only one of a great multitude of 
pilgrims who are coming always, their chief 



130 The I^ast Leaf 

errand being to see the graves of these famous 
dead within the quiet town. In the side of the 
Schloss Kirche, in the city of Wittenberg, is 
an old archway, with pillars carved as if twisted 
and with figures of saints overhead, the sharp- 
ness of the cutting being somewhat broken and 
worn away through time. It is the doorway 
which rang loud three hundred years ago to the 
sound of Luther's hammer as he nailed up his 
ninety-five theses. Within the church, about 
midway toward the altar and near the wall, the 
guide lifts an oaken trap-door and shows you, 
beneath, the slab which covers Luther's ashes. 
Just opposite, in a sepulchre precisely similar, 
lies Melanchthon, and in the chancel near by, 
in tombs rather more stately, the electors of 
Saxony that befriended the reformers. A spot 
worthy indeed to be a place of pilgrimage! at- 
tracting not only those who bless the men, but 
those who curse them. Charles V. and Alva 
stood once on the pavement where the visitor 
now stands, and the Emperor commanded the 
stone to be removed from the grave of Luther. 
Did the body turn in its coffin at the violation? 
It might well have been so, for never was there 
fiercer hate. For three centuries the generations 
have trooped hitherward, more often drawn in 
reverence, but sometimes through very hatred, 
a multitude too mighty to be numbered. But 
there is a grave in Prussia, where, if I mistake 
not, the pilgrims are more numerous and the 



Sep\ilcHre of FredericK tKe Great 131 

interest, for the average Prussian, deeper than 
scholar or poet or reformer call out. The garri- 
son church at Potsdam has a plain name and 
is a plain edifice, when one thinks of the 
sepulchre it holds. Hung upon the walls are 
dusty trophies; there are few embellishments 
besides. You make your way through the aisles 
among the pews where the regiments sit at 
service, marching from their barracks close by, 
then through a door beneath the pulpit enter 
a vault lighted by tajDers along the wall. Two 
heavy coffins stand on the stone floor, — the older 
one that of Frederick William I., that despot, 
partially insane, perhaps, who yet accomplished 
great things for Prussia; the other that of his 
famous son, Frederick the Great, whose sword 
cut the path by which Prussia advanced to her 
vast power. On the copper lid formerly lay 
that sword, until the great Napoleon when he 
stood there, feeling a twinge of jealousy perhaps 
over the dead leader's fame, carried it away with 
him. Father and son lie quietly enough now 
side by side, though their relations in life were 
stormy. About the great soldier's sleep every 
hour rolls the drumbeat from the garrison close 
by. The tramp of the columns as they come in 
to worship jar the warrior's ashes. The dusky 
standards captured in the Seven Years' War 
droop about him. The hundred intervening 
years have blackened them, already singed in 
the fire of Zorndorf, Leuthen, and Torgau. The 



132 The Last Leaf 

moth makes still larger the rent where the vol- 
leys passed. The spiked helmet is even here 
among the tombs ; and schooled as the Prussians 
are among the din of trumpets and smoke of 
wars, no other among the mighty graves in their 
land holds dust, in their thought, so heroic. 

Seven hundred years ago Frederick's ancestor 
Conrad, the younger son of a family of some rank, 
but quite undistinguished, riding down from the 
little stronghold of Hohenzollern in Swabia, with 
nothing but a good head and arm, won favour 
with the Emperor Barbarossa and became at 
last Burggraf of ISTuremberg. I saw the old 
castle in which this Conrad lived and his line 
after him for several generations. It rises 
among fortifications the plan for which Albert 
Diirer drew, with narrow windows in the thick 
masonry of the towers, the battlements worn by 
the pacing to and fro of sentinels in armour, and 
an ancient linden in the court-yard, planted by an 
empress a thousand years ago it is said, with 
as green a canopy to throw over the tourist to- 
day as it threw over those old Hohenzollerns. 
Conrad transmitted to his descendants his good 
head and strong arm, until at length becoming 
masters of Baireuth and Anspach, they were 
Margraves and ranked among important princes. 
Their seat now was at Culmbach, in the great 
castle of the Plessenburg. I saw one May morn- 
ing the grey walls of the old nest high on its 
cliff at the junction of the red and white Main, 



THe HoKenzollern Lineage 133 

threatening still, for it is now a Bavarian prison. 
The power of the house grew slowly. In one 
age it got Brandenburg, in another the great 
districts of Ost and West Preussen; now it was 
possessions in Silesia, now again territory on 
the Khine. Power came sometimes through im- 
perial gift, sometimes through marriage, some- 
times through purchase or diplomacy or blows. 
From poor soldiers of fortune to counts, from 
counts to princes, from princes to electors, and 
at last kings. Sometimes they are unscrupulous, 
sometimes feeble, sometimes nobly heroic and 
faithful; more often strong than weak in brain 
and hand. The Hohenzollern tortoise keeps 
creeping forward in its history, surpassing 
many a swift hare that once despised it in the 
race. I believe it is the oldest princely line in 
Europe. There is certainly none whose history 
on the whole is better. Margxaf George of 
Anspach-Baireuth was perhaps the finest char- 
acter among the Protestant princes of the Re- 
formation, without whom the good fight could 
not have been fought. When Charles V. be- 
sieged Metz in the winter (which, with Lorraine, 
had just been torn from Germany by the 
French), and was compelled by the cold to 
withdraw, it was a Hohenzollern prince, one of 
the first soldiers of the time, who led the rear- 
guard over ground which another Hohenzollern, 
Prince Frederick Charles, has again made 
famous. Later, in Frederick the Great, the 



134 The Last Leaf 

house furnislied one of the firmest hands that 
ever held a royal sceptre. His successors have 
been men of power. 

They are good types of their stock, and Prus- 
sia is worthy of the leadership to which she is 
advancing. In the cathedral of Speyer stand 
the statues of the mighty German Kaisers, who 
six hundred years ago wore the purple, and, after 
their wild battle with the elements of disorder 
about them, were buried at last in its crypts. 
Tliey are majestic figures for the most part,, 
idealised by the sculptor, and yet probably not 
far beyond nature; for the imperial dignity was 
not hereditary, but given to the man chosen for 
it, and the choice was often a worthy one. They 
were leaders in character as well as station, and 
it is right to give their images the bearing of 
men strong in war and council. I felt that if 
the ancient dignity was to be revived in our own 
day, and the sceptre of Barbarossa and Rudolph 
of Hapsburg to be extended again over a united 
Germany, there had been few princes more 
worthy to hold it than the modern Hohenzollern. 

In speaking of this great people so as to give 
the best idea of them in a short space, I have 
seized on what seemed to me in those days the 
most salient thing, and described various phases 
of their life as pervaded by it. The fighting 
spirit was bred in their bones. They were a 
nation of warriors almost as much as the Spar- 
tans, and stood ready on the instant to obey 



TKe Reason for it All 135 

the tap of the drum calling to arms. Such con- 
stant suggestions of war were painful. The 
spiked helmet is never an amiable head-dress; 
" but," said the representative Prussian, " there 
is no help for it. We have been a weak people 
wedged in between powerful unscrupulous neigh- 
bours, and have had a life-and-death struggle to 
wage almost constantly with one or the other 
of these, or all at once. And in what way is 
our situation different now? Is Russia less am- 
bitious? How many swords has France beaten 
into ploughshares? What pruning-hooks have 
been made from the spears of Austria? Let us 
know on what conditions we can live other than 
wearing our spiked helmets, and we will em- 
brace them." It was not an easy matter to argue 
down your resolute Prussian when he turned to 
you warmly, after you had been crying peace to 
him. 

As I pondered, I thought perhaps it is a neces- 
sity, since the world is what it is, that Europe 
should still be a place of discord. America, 
however, is practically one, not a jarring com- 
pany of nations repeating the protracted agony 
of the Old World. We have no question of the 
" balance of power " coming up in every genera- 
tion, settled only to be unsettled amid devasta- 
tion and slaughter. We can grow forward 
unhindered, with hardly more than a feather's 
weight of energy taken for fighting from the 
employments of peace. America stands indeed 



136 XHe Last Leaf 

a nation blessed of God; and there is nothing 
better worth her while to pray for than that a 
happier time may come to her giant brother 
over the sea; that the strength of such an arm 
may not always waste itself wielding the sword ; 
that the sensibilities of such a heart may not 
be crushed or brutalised in carnage that forever 
repeats itself; that the noble head may some 
time exchange the spiked helmet for the olive 
chaplet of peace. 



CHAPTER V 

A student's experience in the FRANCO-PRUSSIAN 

WAR 

WE rememberers lie under certain suspicion. 
" Uncle Mose," said an inquirer, his in- 
tonation betraying scepticism, " they say you 
remember General Washington." " Yaas, Boss," 
replied Uncle Mose, " I used to 'member Gen'l 
Washington, but sence I jined de church I done 
forgot." Not having joined Uncle Mose's 
church, my memory has not experienced the 
ecclesiastical discouragement that befell him. 
I humbly trust, however, it needs no chastening, 
and aver that I do not go for my facts to my 
imagination. I am now in foreign parts deal- 
ing with personages of especial dignity and 
splendour and must establish my memory firmly 
in the reader's confidence. 

I was a student in Germany in 1870. In the 
spring at Berlin, passing by the not very con- 
spicuous royal palace on Unter den Linden, one 
day I studied the front with some interest. 
The two sentinels stood in the door saluting with 
clock-work precision the officers who frequently 

137 



138 THe Last Leaf 

passed. A watchful policeman was on the 
corner, but there was little other sign that an 
important personage was within the walls. 
With some shock I suddenly caught sight, in a 
window close at hand, of a tall, robust figure 
with a rugged but not ungenial face surmounted 
by grizzled hair, in uniform with decorations 
hanging upon the broad breast, who, as I 
glanced up, saluted me with an unlooked-for 
nod. I knew at once it was the King of Prussia, 
who before the year was ended was to be croAvned 
as Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse at Versailles. 1 
was thoroughly scared, as I did not know that 
it was the habit of the King to stand in the 
window and good-naturedly greet the passer-by. 
That was my first sight of a real king. But 
there is another figure w^hich I contemplate with 
more interest. The 31st of May of 1870 was a 
day sent from heaven, brilliant sunshine after a 
period of cloud; the spring lording it in the 
air, the trees and grass in their freshest lux- 
uriance. I was at Potsdam that day; in the 
Avide-stretching gardens that surround the New 
Palace. As I walked, I came to a cord drawn 
across the path, indicating that visitors were to 
go no farther. Close by stood a tall young 
grenadier on duty as a sentinel, but willing to 
chat. Looking beyond the cord into the reserved 
space I presently saw coming up from a secluded 
path, a low carriage drawn by a pony led by 
a groom in which was seated a lady dressed in 



THe Cro^wn Prince at Home 139 

white. She was not of distinguished appear- 
ance, but my grenadier told me that it was the 
Crown Princess of Prussia, the daughter of the 
Queen of England. From the screen of the bush 
I watched her with natural interest. The car- 
riage paused and a group of little boys and girls 
came running out from the thicket attended by 
a governess or two and a tutor. The little girls 
had their hands full of flowers, which, running 
forward, they threw into the carriage. The boys, 
too, ran up with pretty demonstrations, and a 
straight little fellow of ten years or so hurried 
to the groom and began to pat the pony's nose. 
These, I learned, were the princes and prin- 
cesses of the royal family. The little fellow 
patting the pony's nose was the eldest and des- 
tined to emerge into history as Kaiser Wilhelm 
the Second. 

And now, from a door of the palace, not far 
distant, came striding a notable figure, tall and 
stalwart, in the undress uniform of a Prussian 
General. Under his fatigue cap the blond hair 
was abundant; a wave of brown beard swept 
down upon his breast. The face was full of 
intelligence and authority, but at that moment 
most kindly as his blue eyes sought the group 
that stood in the foreground. It was the CroTVH 
Prince of Prussia, destined at length to be the 
Emperor Friedrich. The carriage passed on, 
the Crown Prince walking, with his hand on the 
side, while the Princess held her parasol over 



140 THe Last Leaf 

his head, laughing at the idea evidently, that so 
sturdy a soldier needed that kind of a screen. 

The CroT\Ti Prince Friedrich was unpopular 
in those days as too domestic, standing too much 
withdrawn from the bustling world, but there 
was no failure when the stress came. Only a 
few weeks passed before the stout soldier, whom 
I had seen throwing lilies and sheltered from 
the sun by his wife's parasol, was at the head 
of a great army corps, crushing the power of 
France at Worth and Weissembourg ; but the 
report was that he had said, " I do not like war, 
and if I am ever King I shall never make war." 

A few weeks after the Potsdam incident I 
was in the city of Vienna. One morning, like 
thunder out of a clear sky, news came of the 
outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war. I read 
the paper, but, not feeling that tJie news need 
interfere with my sight-seeing, went to the Hof- 
bourg, the old palace, in the heart of the city, 
of the Imperial family of Austria. The build- 
ing is extensive; the streets of the city at that 
time running under it here and there in tunnels. 
I visited the Schatz Kammer, the treasure-room, 
and saw men go almost demented at the spectacle 
of the gold and jewels heaped up in the cases. 
Tlie sight of the splendour, the heaped-up jewels, 
the batons, the faded, and sometimes bloody, gar- 
ments, the trinkets and decorations, associated 
with towering personalities of the past, attuned 
my spirit for some adventure above the com- 



Emperor Francis JosepK 141 

monplace. As I came down into the street, nar- 
row and overhung by the confining arch, a soldier 
passed me on the run into an open space just 
beyond, where instantly a battalion hurried out 
to stand at present. Then in the distance I 
heard galloping of horses and an open carriage 
rapidly approached, in which were seated four 
figures, protected from the light rain by grey 
overcoats, wearing the chapeaux which have 
come down from Napoleonic times. The car- 
riage passed so near that I was obliged to press 
back against the wall to save my feet from the 
wheels, and a figure on the back seat, who, for 
the moment, was within arm's reach, I recognised 
as Francis Joseph. 

He was then a man in his best years, a strong, 
sensible if not impressive face, and a well-knit 
frame. He had driven in from Schonbrunn to 
attend a council meeting, and the day for him 
was no doubt a most critical one. War had 
come. It was only four years after Koniggratz. 
His old enemy, Prussia, was about to hurl her- 
self, with who could tell what allies, against 
France. What stand should Austria take? If 
the Kaiser was agitated, his face did not show 
it; it was significant of quiet, cool poise. Ex- 
citement was repressed, while good sense weighed 
and determined. Few sovereigns have been 
obliged to face so often situations of the utmost 
difficulty. I can believe that with similar im- 
perturbability Francis Joseph has confronted the 



142 THe Last Leaf 

series of perplexities which make up the tangled 
story of his long career, and I count it good 
fortune that I witnessed, in a moment of su- 
preme embarrassment, the balance and resolu- 
tion with which the good ruler went to his task. 
Austria, as the world knows, decided that day 
to be neutral in the Franco-Prussian quarrel. 

The disorder in the land made me feel that 
I must get nearer to my base, so I hurriedly 
left Vienna for Munich, which I found seething 
with agitation, for, like Austria, Bavaria had 
only a few years before been Prussia's enemy, 
and so far as the populace was concerned all 
was in doubt as to w^hat course would now be 
taken. The rumour was that McMahon had 
crossed the Rhine at Strassburg with 150,000 
men, and was marching to interpose between 
Northern and Southern Germany. 

At the Ober-Pollinger I heard in the inn, amid 
the stormy discussion of the crisis, something 
quite out of harmony with the spirit of the hour. 
The first performance was to be given in the 
Royal Opera House of a work of Richard 
Wagner, the Rheingold. Wagner in those days 
had not attained his great fame, and, to a man 
like me, who had no especial interest in music, 
was a name almost unknown, but I went with 
the crowd, thinking to help out a dreary evening 
rather than to enjoy a masterpiece. The house 
was crowded. In the centre before the stage an 
ample space was occupied by the royal box, 



THe Kin^ of Bavaria 143 

richly carved and draped. Presently the King 
entered, a slender, graceful figure in a dress suit, 
his dark rather melancholy face looking hand- 
some in the gorgeous setting of the theatre. 
The crowded audience rose to their feet in a 
tumult of enthusiasm. The air resounded with 
" Hoch ! Hoch ! " the German cheer, and handker- 
chiefs waved like a snow-storm. The King 
bowed right and left in acknowledgment of the 
plaudits, and the performance of the evening was 
kept long in waiting. The line of Bavarian 
kings has perhaps little title to our respect. 
The Ludwig of fifty years ago was a voluptuary, 
vacillating, like another Louis Quinze, between 
debauchery and a weak pietism. He probably 
merited the cuts of the relentless scourge of 
Heine than which no instrument of chastisement 
was ever more unsparing, and which in his case 
was put to its most merciless use; but he loved 
art and lavished his revenues upon pictures, 
statues, and churches, which the world admires, 
imparting a benefit, though his subjects groaned. 
His successor, whom I saw, was a man morbid 
and without force, who early came to a sorrowful 
end. His redeeming quality was a fine aesthetic 
taste, which he had no doubt through heredity, 
together with a sad burden of disease. The 
world remembers kindly that he was a prodigal 
patron of art. 

I went to Heidelberg in February, 1870, bent 
upon a quiet year of study in Germany and 



144 



XHe Last Leaf 



France. Fate had a different programme for 
me. My plans were badly interfered with but 
to see Europe in such a turmoil was an experi- 
ence well worth having. Heidelberg that spring 
was very peaceful. The ice in the Neckar on 
which skaters were disporting on my arrival 
passed out in due course of time to the Rhine, 
the foliage broke forth in glory on the noble 
hills and the nightingales came back to sing in 
the ivy about the storied ruins. There was no 
suggestion in the air of cannon thunder. At 
Berlin, however, as I have described, I found 
things wearing a warlike air. I was eager to 
perfect my German and sought chances to talk 
with all whom I met, and often had pleasant 
converse with the young soldiers who when off 
duty numerously flocked to the gardens and 
street corners. I recall in particular three 
young soldiers whose subsequent fate I should 
like to know. The first was a handsome young 
grenadier who had talked with me affably as we 
stood together screened by the bush in the garden 
of the New Palace at Potsdam watching the fam- 
ily of the Crown Prince, that beautiful forenoon 
in May. . . . When I told him I had myself 
mitgemacht the Civil War in America he at once 
accorded me respect as a veteran. I think he 
was a FreiwiU'iger, one of the class, who, having 
reached a high status in the Gymnasium, en- 
joyed the privilege of a shorter term of service. 
He had the bearing of a cultivated gentleman 



^mon^ tKe RanK and File 145 

and there was strength in his firm young face 
which I have no doubt made him a good soldier 
in the time of stress. We shook hands at last 
in the friendliest way and I saw him no more. 
A few days later the train in which I was riding 
stopped at Erfurt and among the groups at the 
station was one that interested me much. In 
the centre stood a sturdy young Uhlan gaudy in 
full dress which I fancied he had only lately 
assumed, his stature was increased by his lofty 
horse-hair plume and he wore his corselet over 
a uniform in which there was many a dye. A 
bevy of pretty girls thronged around him, freshly 
beautiful after the German type, blond and blue- 
eyed in attractive summer draperies, and I 
speculated pleasantly as to which among them 
were sisters and which sweethearts. As the 
train departed the young Uhlan climbed into 
my compartment and we sat vis-a-vis as we rode 
on through the country. He was a frank in- 
genuous boy of twenty with eyes that danced 
with life, and a mobile play of features. My 
claim that I had seen service in the tented 
field again served me in good stead as an intro- 
duction ; it was a passport to his confidence and 
I had a pleasant hour or two with him until 
he left me at length at his rendezvous. 

Best of all I remember a third encounter. 
When I stepped from my car at Weimar I asked 
a direction from a young grenadier off duty who 
stood at hand on the platform. He too pos- 



146 TKe Last Leaf 

sessed the usual Teutonic vigour and strength. 
A conversation sprang up in which I explained 
that I was an American and desired to see as 
well as I could in a few hours the interesting 
things in that little city so quiet and renowned. 
I had found out by this time that my small 
veteranship was a good asset and paraded it 
for all it was worth and as usual it told. He 
was off duty for a few hours and had never 
visited the shrines of AVeimar, and if I had no 
objection he would like to go with me on my 
tour of inspection, so together we walked through 
those shadowed streets, which seemed to be 
haunted even in that bright sunshine by the 
ghosts of the great men who have w^alked in 
them. We saw the homes of Goethe and 
Schiller, the noble statues of the Dichter-Paar, 
and the old theatre behind it in which were 
first performed the masterpieces of the German 
drama. We went together to the cemetery and 
descending into the crypt of the mausoleum 
stood by the coffins of Goethe and Schiller, the 
men most illustrious in German letters. It was 
a memorable day of my life, the outward con- 
ditions perfect, the June sunshine, the wealth 
of lovely foliage, the bird songs, and right at 
hand the homes and haunts of the inspired 
singers whom I especially reverenced. I was 
most fortunate in my companionship, the bear- 
ing of the youth was marked by no flippancy, 
he venerated as I did the lofty spirits into whose 



Soldiery of France 147 

# 
retreats we had penetrated. He was familiar 
with their masterpieces and we felt for them a 
like appreciation. His soldierly garb accorded 
perhaps ill with the peaceful suggestions of the 
hour and place, but in his mind plainly the sen- 
timent lay deep, a warm recognition of what 
gave his country its best title to greatness. We 
took thought too of Wieland and looked in 
silence at the fine statue of Herder standing 
before the church in which he long ministered; 
but the supreme personages for us were Goethe 
and Schiller. What became of my sympathetic 
young soldier I have never known. If he es- 
caped from Mars-la-Tour and Gravelotte and 
Sedan I am sure that he must have matured 
into a high-souled man. 

I had an opportunity, during a visit to Strass- 
burg in the spring, to see the soldiery of France. 
At the time the prestige of the Second Empire 
was at its height, Magenta and Solferino were 
considerable battles and the French had won 
them. Turcos and Zouaves had long passed in 
the world as soldiers of the best type and in 
our Civil War we had copied zealously their 
fantastic apparel and drill. When the Franco- 
Prussian War broke out the world felt that 
Germany had the hardest of nuts to crack and 
in many a mind the forecast was that France 
would be the victor, but even to my limited judg- 
ment the shortcomings of the French troops were 
plain. They were inferior in physique, lacking in 



148 The Last Leaf 

trimness and even in cleanliness, and imperfectly 
disciplined. I wondered if tlie rather slovenly ill- 
trained battalions of small pale men could stand 
up against the prompt rigid alignment of the 
broad-shouldered six-footers I had seen manoeuv- 
ring on the other side of the Rhine. 

I had received word in the spring from my 
bankers in Paris that my letter of credit was 
not in regular shape and they advised me to 
draw^ at Berlin a sum of money sufficient for 
present needs and transmit the letter to them, 
promising to adjust the matter in such a way 
that both they and I would be relieved of some 
inconvenience. In June I drew a small sum 
and sent my letter to Paris in accordance with 
their instructions, the agreement being that I 
was to call a month or so later on the corre- 
spondents at Munich of the Paris bankers and 
receive from them the corrected letter. I then 
travelled as far as Vienna where all unforeseen 
the news startled me of the outbreak of the war. 
I hurried to Munich, my little store of money 
being by that time much depleted. At the bank- 
ing house I learned to my consternation that they 
had heard nothing of me or my letter of credit. 
Still worse, there was no prospect of hearing, com- 
munication with Paris was completely broken off. 
The rumour was that INIcMahon had crossed the 
Rhine at Strassburg with one hundred and fifty 
thousand men on the march to interpose be- 
tween Southern and Northern Germany. The 



My Strait at MunicK 149 

house had not heard from Paris and could not 
expect to hear. Acting on their advice I sent 
a distressful telegram roundabout through 
Switzerland to Paris. There was a possibility 
that such a message might go through; other- 
wise there was no hope. I then spent at Munich 
one of the most anxious weeks of my life. I 
was nearer the pavement than I have ever been 
before or since. There was a charming German 
family at the inn at which I stopped, gentle, 
courteous people, father, mother, and a little 
blue-eyed daughter. When the little girl found 
I was from America I can now see her innocent 
wide-open eyes as she asked me if I had ever 
seen an Indian. I could tell her some good 
stories of Indians for in boyhood I had lived 
near a reservation of Senecas, at that time to a 
large extent, in their primitive state. When I 
ventured one day to tell the polite father of my 
present embarrassment I at once noticed a sud- 
den cooling off. The little girl no longer came 
to talk with me and the family held aloof. 
Plainly I had become an object of suspicion, I 
was now penniless, my story might be true or 
perhaps I was paving the way for asking a loan. 
How could he tell that I was not a dead-beat? 
I was really in a strait. The Americans had 
very generally left the city in consequence of 
the turmoil. I could hear of no one excepting 
our Consul who was still at his post. Calling 
upon him and telling my story, I found him cool 



150 XKe Last Leaf 

to the point of rudeness. I had excellent letters 
from Bancroft and others which I showed him 
and which ought to have secured me a respectful 
bearing. I asked only for sympathy and counsel 
but I received neither, and could not have been 
treated worse if I had been a proved swindler. 
The Consul afterwards wrote a book in which 
he told of experiences with inconvenient coun- 
trymen who had recourse to him in their straits, 
and possibly I myself may have figured as one 
of his examples. My feeling is that he was a 
man not fit for his place, for in the circum- 
stances he might certainly have shown some 
kindness. My few pieces of silver jingled drear- 
ily in my pocket; perhaps my best course would 
be to enlist in the German army. I thought the 
cause a just one for the atmosphere had made 
me a good German, and as a soldier I might at 
least earn my bread. To my joy, however, in 
one of my daily visits to the banking house the 
courteous young partner told me that a telegram 
had come in some roundabout way from Paris 
and they were prepared to pay me the full 
amount on my letter of credit. I clutched the 
money, two pretty cylinders of gold coin done 
up in white paper, which I sewed securely into 
the waist-band of my trousers and felt an instant 
strengthening of nerve and self-respect. 

I departed then for Switzerland where I en- 
joyed a delightful fortnight. The rebound from 
my depression imparted a fine morale. Switzer- 



A. Deserted S-witzerland 151 

land was practically deserted, no French or 
Germans were there for they had enough to do 
with the war; the English for the most part 
stayed at home, for Europe could only be 
crossed with difficulty, and the crowd from 
America too was deterred by the danger. In- 
stead of the throngs at the great points of in- 
terest, the visitors counted by twos and threes. 
The guides and landlords were obsequious. We 
few strangers had the Alps to ourselves and they 
were as lavish of their splendours to the handful 
as to the multitude. At Geneva at last I found 
letters from home which caused me anxiety; I 
was referred for later news to letters which were 
to be sent to Paris; so there was nothing for 
it but for me to cross France, though by that 
time France had become a camp. Fortunately 
I had met in Switzerland an American friend 
who was proficient in French as I was not and 
who likewise found it necessary to go to Paris, 
and we two started together. After crossing 
the frontier we found no regular trains; those 
that ran were taken up for the most part by 
the multitudes of conscripts hurrying into 
armies that were undergoing disaster in the 
neighbourhood of Metz. The case of two Ameri- 
can strangers was a precarious one involved in 
such a mass, with food even very uncertain and 
the likelihood of being side-tracked at any sta- 
tion, but we were both strong and light-hearted 
and I felt at my waist-band the comfortable 



152 XHe Last Leaf 

contact of my bright yellow Napoleons which 
would pull us through. Constantly we beheld 
scenes of the greatest interest. The August 
landscape smiled its best about us, we passed 
Dijon and many another old storied city famous 
in former wars, and now again humming with the 
military life with which they had been so many 
times familiar. The Mobiles came thronging to 
every depot from the vineyards and fields and 
the remoter villages. As yet they were usually 
in picturesque peasant attire, young farmers in 
blouses or with hrefelles crossing in odd fashion 
the queer shirts tliey wore. Careless happy-go- 
lucky boys chattering in the excitement of the 
new life which they were entering, only half-in- 
formed as to the catastrophes which were taking 
place, but the mothers and sisters, plain country 
women in short skirts, quaint bodices and caps, 
looked upon their departure with anxious faces. 
I was familiar enough with such scenes in our 
own Civil War; thousands of those boys w^ere 
never to return. 

Eeaching Paris we found an atmosphere of 
depression. A week or two before the streets 
had resounded with the MarseUlaise and echoed 
with the fierce cry, " A Berlin ! A Berlin ! " 
That confidence had all passed, I heard the 
Marseillaise sung only once, and that in dis- 
heartened perfunctory fashion, perhaps by order 
of the authorities in a futile attempt to stimulate 
courage that was waning. Rage and mortifica- 



Arrival in Paris 153 

tion over the fast-accumulating German suc- 
cesses possessed the hearts of men. In the 
squares companies of civilians were industriously 
drilling, often in the public places men wearing 
hospital badges extended salvers to the passers-by 
asking for contributions, " Pour les blesses, 
monsieur, pour less blesses ! " Now and then 
well-disciplined divisions crossed the Place de 
la Concorde, the regiments stacking arms for 
a brief halt. I studied them close at hand ; these 
at least looked as might have looked the soldiers 
of the First Empire, strong and resolute, with 
an evident capacity for taking care of them- 
selves even in the small matter of cooking their 
soup, and providing for their needs there on the 
asphalt. Their officers were soldierly figures on 
horseback, dressed for rough work, and the 
gaitered legs, with the stout shoes below dusty 
already from long marching, were plainly capable 
of much more. There was a pathos about it all, 
however, a marked absence of elan and en- 
thusiasm, the faces under the kepis were firm 
and strong enough but they had little hope. 
Nothing so paralyses a soldier as want of con- 
fidence in the leadership and these poor fellows 
had lost that. The regiments passed on in turn, 
the sunlight glittering on their arms. Through 
the vista of the boulevard the eagles of the 
Second Empire rose above, the grave colonels 
were conspicuous at the head, and the drum- 
beats, choked by the towering buildings, sounded 



154 THe Last Leaf 

a melanclioly muffled march that was befitting. 
It was the scene pictured by D^taille in Le 
Regiment qui Passe. Could he have been with us 
on the curbstone making his studies? It was 
indeed for them a funeral march, for they were 
on the}' way to Sedan. The Prussians, it was 
said, were within four days' march of the city, 
and the barrier at Metz had been completely 
broken down. 

In most minds Paris is associated with gayety, 
my Paris, on the other hand, is a solemn spot 
darkened by an impending shadow of calamity. 
The theatres were closed. No one was admitted 
to the Invalides, so that I could not see the tomb 
of Napoleon. The Madeleine was open for ser- 
vice, but deep silence prevailed. In the great 
spaces of the temple the robed priests bowed 
before the altar and noiseless groups of wor- 
shippers knelt on the pavement. It was a time 
for earnest prayers. The Louvre was still open 
and I was fortunate enough to see the Venus 
of Milo, though a day or two after I believe it 
was taken from its pedestal and carefully con- 
cealed. The expectation was of something dread- 
ful and still the city did not take in the sorrow 
which lay before it. " Do you think the Prus- 
sians will bombard Paris? " I heard a man ex- 
claim, his voice and manner indicating that such 
a thing was incredible, but the Prussian cannon 
were close at hand. For our part, my companion 
and I thought we were in no especial danger. 



In Danger on tlie Seine I55 

We quartered ourselves comfortably at a pension^ 
walked freely about the streets, and saw what 
could be seen with the usual zest of healthy 
young travellers. The little steamboats were 
still plying on the Seine and we took one at last 
for the trip that opens to one so much that 
is beautiful and interesting in architecture and 
history. It was a lovely afternoon even for 
summer and we passed in and out under the 
superb arches of the bridges, beholding the 
noble apse of Notre Dame with the twin towers 
rising beyond, structures associated with grim 
events of the Revolution, the masonry of the 
quays and the master work of Haussmann who 
was then putting a new face upon the old city. 
Now all was bright and no thought of danger 
entered our minds as we revelled in the pleasures 
of such an excursion. At length as we stood 
on the deck we became aware that we were un- 
dergoing careful scrutiny from a considerable 
group who for the most part made up our 
fellow-passengers. We had had no thought of 
ourselves as especially marked. My clothes, 
however, had been made in Germany and had 
peculiarities no doubt which indicated as much. 
I was fairly well grounded in French but had 
no practice in speaking. In trying to talk 
French, my tongue in spite of me ran into 
German, which I had been speaking constantly 
for six months. This was particularly the case 
if I was at all embarrassed ; ray face and figure, 



156 The Last Leaf 

moreover, were plainly Teutonic and not Latin. 
The French ascribed their disasters largely to 
the fact that German spies were everywhere 
prying into the conditions, and reporting every 
assailable point and element of weakness. This 
belief was well grounded ; the Germans probably 
knew France better than the French themselves 
and skilfully adapted their attacks to the lacks 
and negligences which the swarming spies laid 
bare. The group, of whose scrutiny we had be- 
come aware, was made up of ouvriers and ouvri- 
eres, the men in the invariable blouse, with dark 
matted hair and black eyes, sometimes with a 
ratlike keenness of glance as they surveyed us. 
The women were roughly dressed, sometimes in 
sabots, with heads bare or surmounted by conical 
caps. They belonged to the proletariat, the class 
out of which had come in the Eeign of Terror the 
sans-culottes of evil memory and the tricoteuses 
who had sat knitting about the guillotine, the 
class which, within a few months, was again to 
set the world aghast as the mob of La Commune. 
As we stood disconcerted by their intent gaze, 
they put their heads together and talked in low 
and rapid tones; then their spokesman ap- 
proached us, a man of polite bearing but omi- 
nously stern. He was not a clumsy fellow, but 
darkly forceful and direct, a man capable of a 
quick, desperate deed. At the moment there was 
the grim tiger in their eyes and from the soft 
paw the swift protrusion of the cruel claw. One 



-A L-ucKy Passport 157 

thought of the wild revolutionary song, " Qa ga, 
9a ira, les aristocrats h la lanterne ! " They were 
the children of the mob that had sung that song. 
With a bow, the spokesman said : " Messieurs, 
we think you are Germans and we wish 
to know if we are right." We protested that 
we were Americans, but the spokesman said he 
was unconvinced, and as he pressed for further 
evidence I gave way to my companion whose 
readier French could deal better with the situa- 
tion. He demanded to see our passports with 
which fortunately we were both provided; I had 
not thought of a j)assport as a necessity, and 
almost by chance had procured one the week 
before from our Minister in Switzerland, a care- 
ful description, vouching for my American citi- 
zenship, signed and sealed by the United States 
official. This perhaps saved my life. We sur- 
rendered our passports to our interrogator; he 
carried them back to the throng behind him who 
were now glowering angrily at us, as they chat- 
tered among themselves. Half-amused and half- 
alarmed, we waited while the documents were 
passed from hand to hand, carefully conned and 
inspected. We could not believe that we were 
in danger, here in the bright day in beautiful 
Paris, with the sacred towers of Notre Dame 
soaring close at hand. There were no gendarmes 
on the boat or on the quays, but how could it 
be that we needed protection? After a quarter 
of an hour's suspense, during which there had 



158 TKe Last Leaf 

been a voluble counselling among the group, the 
spokesman came forth again with our passports 
in hand carefully folded, these he returned to 
us, touching his hat with a stiff and formal bow. 
" We have persuaded ourselves," said he, " that 
you are what you claim to be, Americans, and 
it is fortunate for you that it is so, for we had 
intended to throw you into the Seine as Prus- 
sian spies." Here was a surprise indeed! The 
group then dispersed about the boat apparently 
satisfied. Still rather amused than alarmed we 
pocketed our passports. Under the arch of one 
of the stately bridges close by, the Seine flowed 
in heavy shadows on its way, and we looked 
down upon the dark waters. Throbbing with 
life as we were, could it be possible that we 
had just escaped a grave in its watery embrace? 
Presently we landed light-hearted, and were 
again in the streets, but in days that followed 
immediately my heart was often in my throat, 
as I read in the papers of the corpses of men 
taken out of the river who undoubtedly had been 
thrown in under suspicion of being German spies. 
After a sojourn of not quite a week in Paris 
we made up our minds it was no place for us. 
My plans for study were quite broken up, it 
was scarcely possible to get back to Germany 
and nothing could be done in France. I had 
letters which in a time of peace would have 
opened the way for me to many a pleasant circle. 
My intention had been to study for some time 



France Left BeKind 159 

in France, but under the circumstances it would 
be a comfortable thing to have the Atlantic roll- 
ing between me and Europe, and therefore, I 
prepared to depart for home. At the pension, 
on the day I had fixed for departure, while 
coming down the staircase waxed and highly 
polished, I slipped and fell heavily, so bruising 
my knee that I was nearly crippled. Fortu- 
nately no bones were broken and with much 
pain I managed to hobble to the official from 
whom I must obtain a pass to leave the city. 
I set out for the l^orth, on almost the last train 
that left the city, at the end of August. The 
sights were gloomy, the towns which we passed 
seemed associated with ancient bloodshed. We 
touched St. Quentin and crossed the field of 
Malplaquet, and finally near Mons passed the 
Belgian frontier. Marlborough and the names 
associated with former wars were suggested to 
my thoughts by these historic spots. I was 
heartily glad when at length in cheerful Brus- 
sels I was beyond danger. On the fateful day 
when the Second Empire went down at Sedan, 
I was on the field of Waterloo where half a 
century before the First Empire had perished. 
The news of the morning made it plain that 
on that day the great debacle was to culminate. 
We listened all day for cannon thunder; under 
certain conditions of the atmosphere the sound 
of heavy guns may reverberate as far perhaps, 
as from Sedan to Waterloo. That day, however, 



\ 



i6o THe Last Leaf 

there was no ominous grumble from the east- 
ward, the sky was cloudless, the flowers bloomed 
about the Chateau d'Hougomont, and the birds 
twittered in peace at the point before La Haie- 
Sainte to which the First Napoleon advanced 
in the evening and where for the last time he 
heard the shout then so long familiar but for- 
ever after unheard, " Vive I'Empereur ! " Hu- 
miliation now after half a century had over- 
whelmed in turn his unhappy successor. 



CHAPTER VI 



AMERICAN HISTORIANS 



AS a Harvard under-graduate I roomed for a 
time in Hollis 8, a room occupied in turn 
by Willian H. Prescott and James Schouler, and 
perhaps I may attribute to some contagion 
caught as a transmittendum in that apartment, 
an itch for writing history which has brought 
some trouble to me and to the rather limited 
circle of readers whom I have reached. I re- 
member debating, as a boy, whether the more de- 
sirable fame fell to the hero in a conflict or to the 
scribe who told the story. Whose place would 
one rather have? That of Timoleon and Nicias 
or of Plutarch and Thucydides their celebrants? 
But the celebrants, no doubt, seemed to their 
contemporaries very insignificant figures com- 
pared to the champions whose fame they per- 
petuated. The historians of America are a 
goodly company, scarcely less worthy than the 
champions whose deeds they have chronicled. 
With most men who, during the last seventy- 
five years, have written history in America, I 
have had contact, sometimes a mere glimpse, 

II i6i 



l62 THe Last Leaf 

sometimes intimacy. Washington Irving and 
Prescott I never saw, though as to the latter I 
have just been making him responsible to some 
extent for my own little proclivity. Parkman, 
I only saw sitting with his handsome Grecian 
face relieved against a dignified background as 
he sat on the stage among the Corporation of 
Harvard University. Motley I have only seen 
as he stood with iron-grey curls over a ruddy, 
strenuous countenance topping a figure of vigor- 
ous symmetry as he spoke with animation at a 
scholars' dinner. But George Bancroft, Justin 
Winsor, and John Fiske I knew well, the last 
being in particular one of my best friends. I 
could tell stories too, of the living lights, but 
am concerned here with the ghosts and not with 
men still red-blooded. 

I first saw George Bancroft when he was 
Minister at Berlin. He had read a little book 
of mine. The Color Guard, my diary as a Cor- 
poral of the Nineteenth Army Corps, scribbled 
off on my cap-top, my gun-stock, or indeed my 
shoe-sole, or whatever desk I could extemporise 
as we marched and fought. That book gave me 
some claim to his notice, but a better claim was 
that his wife was Elizabeth Davis, whom more 
than a hundred years ago my grandfather of the 
ancient First Parish in Plymouth had baptised 
and who as a girl had been my mother's play- 
mate in gardens near Plymouth Kock. I did not 
presume upon such credentials as these to ob- 



George Bancroft 163 

trude myself, and was pleasantly surprised one 
day by a note inviting me to the Embassy. It 
was a retired house near the Thiergarten. I 
found Mr. Bancroft embarrassed with duties 
which in those days gave trouble. German emi- 
grants returning after prosperous years to the 
Fatherland were often pounced upon, the valid- 
ity of their American citizenship denied, and 
taxes and military service demanded. It was 
tough work to straighten out such knots and 
the Minister was in the midst of such a tangle. 
But his high, broad forehead smoothed presently, 
and his grey eyes grew genial, while the vivacious 
features spoke with the very cordial impulse 
with which he greeted one who had heard the 
bullets of the Civil War whistle and was the 
son of his wife's old friend. Another tie was 
that his father. Dr. Aaron Bancroft of Worcester, 
and my grandfather, had stood shoulder to 
shoulder in the controversy of a century ago 
which rent apart New England Congregational- 
ism. Presently we sat down to lunch, a party 
of three, for the board was graced by the pre- 
sence of Mrs. Bancroft, a woman of fine accom- 
plishments polished through contact with high 
society in many lands, and a gifted talker. 
Many readers have found her published letters 
charming. The talk was largely of the Civil 
War and Bancroft's words were in the best sense 
patriotic. During and before that period his 
course had been much disapproved. He had been 



164 XHe Lrast Leaf 

Collector of Boston under Democratic auspices 
and had served under Polk as Secretary of the 
Navy, where he laid the country lastingly under 
debt by establishing the Naval Academy at Anna- 
polis. I do not approve or condemn, but I felt him 
wisely and warmly patriotic, deeply concerned 
that the outcome of our long national agony 
should be worthy of the sacrifice. The breath 
of a pleasant spring day pervaded the elegant 
apartment while the birds sang in the tall trees 
stretching out toward the forest of the Thier- 
garten. I especially associate with the Bancrofts 
their beautiful outdoor environment. Another 
day I drove with the Minister, our companions 
in the carriage being the wife and the daughter 
of Ernst Curtius, to visit the rose gardens about 
Berlin. I have met few men readier or more 
agreeable in conversation. With a pleasant 
smile and intonation he touched gracefully on 
this and that, sometimes in reminiscence. I re- 
member in particular a vivid setting forth of an 
interview with Goethe Avhich he had enjoyed as 
a boy fifty years before. Sometimes his talk 
was of poetry in general and I was much struck 
with his frequent happy application of quota- 
tions to the little events of the drive and phases 
of feeling that came up as the day went on. The 
sun set gloriously, "So stirht ein Held" said 
Bancroft, as he burst with feeling into the 
beautiful lyric of which tliese words are a line. 
The best German poetry seemed to be at his 



Roses and History 165 

tongue's end and he recited it with sympathy 
and accuracy which called out much admiration 
from the cultivated German ladies with whom 
we were driving. Most interesting of all was 
Bancroft's evident passion for roses. The gar- 
deners, as we stopped, were plainly surprised at 
his knowledge of their varieties and the best 
methods of cultivation. He was so well versed 
in the lore of the rose and so devoted to its 
cultivation one might well have thought it his 
horse and not his hobby. He possessed at New- 
port a rose garden far famed for the number of 
its varieties and the perfection of the flowers, 
and it was an interesting sight at Washington 
to see Bancroft, even when nearing ninety, busy 
in his garden in H Street, one attendant shield- 
ing his light figure with a sun umbrella, while 
another held at hand, hoe, shears, and twine, the 
implements to train and cull. Is there a subtle 
connection between roses and history? Park- 
man wrote an elaborate book upon rose culture 
which I believe is still of authority, and John 
Fiske had a conservatory opening out of his 
library and the rose of all flowers was the one 
he prized. Here is a neat turn of McMaster. 
At a dinner given in his honour a big bunch of 
American Beauties was opposite to him as he 
sat. It fell to me to make a welcoming speech. 
Catching at the occasion, I suggested a connec- 
tion between roses and history and referred to 
McMaster close behind his American Beauties as 



i66 THe l^ast Leaf 

an instance in point, at the same time express- 
ing with earnestness my strong admiration of 
that good writer's work. McMaster rose, his 
face glowing in response to my emphatic com- 
pliment. His speech consisted of only one sen- 
tence, " I have one bond with the rose, I blush."' 
I owe many favours to Bancroft ; the greatest 
perhaps that he allowed me to consult to my 
heart's content the papers of Samuel Adams, a 
priceless collection which he possessed. For this 
he gave me carte hlanche to use his library in 
Washington, though he himself was absent, a 
favour which he said he had never accorded to 
an investigator before. It was an inspiring 
place for a student, the shelves burdened with 
treasures in manuscript as well as print. The 
most interesting portrait of Bancroft presents 
him as a nonagenarian, against this impressive 
background, at work to the last. The critics of 
our day minimise Bancroft and his school. His- 
tory in that time walked in garments quite too 
flowing, it is said, and with an overdisplay of 
the Horatian purple patch. Our grandsons may 
feel that the history of our time walks in gar- 
ments too sad-coloured and scant. Research and 
accuracy are, of course, primary requisites in 
this field, but there should be some employment 
of the picturesque. The world was beautiful in 
the old days and human life was vivid. Ought 
we to deny to all this a warm and graphic set- 
ting forth? If we do we shall do it to our cost. 



Jvistin Winsor 167 

Is it the proper attitude of the historian simply 
to write, without thought of anything so irre- 
levant as a reader? Bancroft was a pioneer, 
breaking the way ponderously perhaps, but he 
delved faithfully. If the orotund rolls too sono- 
rously in his periods it was an excess in which 
his age upheld him. He was a good path-breaker 
and ought not to be lightly esteemed by those 
who now go to and fro with ease through the 
roads he opened. 

My first touch with Justin Winsor was in my 
Freshman year at Cambridge. We both had 
rooms under the roof of an uncle of mine. His 
room was afterwards occupied, I believe, by 
Theodore Roosevelt. It had been rubbed into 
me by many snubs that a vast gulf interposed 
between the Freshman and upper-class man. I 
used to pass his door with reverence, for the 
story went that, even as a boy, he had written 
a history of Duxbury, Massachusetts. Once 
during his temporary absence, his door standing 
open, I dared to step into the apartment and 
surveyed with awe the well-filled shelves and 
scribbled papers; but in later years when I had 
won some small title to notice I found him most 
kind and approachable. The abundance of the 
Harvard Library and still better the rich ac- 
cumulations in the cells of his own memory he 
held for general use. He loaned me once for 
months at St. Louis a rarely precious seven- 
teenth-century book, which had belonged to Car- 



i68 The Last Leaf 

lyle, and whose margins were sometimes filled 
with Carlyle's notes. He imparted freely from 
his own vast information and it was pleasant 
indeed to hold a chair for an hour or two in 
his hospitable home. In our last interview the 
prose and the solemn romance of life were 
strangely blended. We had just heard the burial 
service in Appleton Chapel read by Phillips 
Brooks over the coffin of James Kussell Lowell; 
then we rode together on the crowded platform 
of a street-car to the grave at Mount Auburn; 
a rough and jostling company on the platform, 
and in my mind a throng of deep and melancholy 
thoughts. I never saw him again. In his call- 
ing he was a master of research extracting with 
unlimited toil the last fragment of evidence from 
the blindest scribblings of earlier times. These 
results, painfully accumulated, he set down with 
absolute faithfulness; his bibliographies supple- 
menting his own contributions and also those of 
the many writers whom he inspired and guided 
in like labours are exhaustive. Rarely is there 
a wisp to be gleaned where Winsor has garnered. 
If he was deficient in the power of vivid and 
picturesque presentment, it is only that like all 
men he had his limitations. 

John Fiske I met soon after his graduation 
at Cambridge. It is odd to recall him when one 
thinks of his later physique, as a youth with 
fresh ruddy face, tall and not broad, a rather 
slender pillar of a man, corniced with an abund- 



JoKn FisKe 169 

ant pompadour of brown hair. He was just then 
making fame for himself in the domain of philo- 
sophy, contributing to the New^ York World 
papers well charged with revolutionary ideas 
which were then causing consternation, so 
lucidly and attractively formulated that they in- 
terested the most cursory reader. Perhaps John 
Fiske ought always to have kept to philosophy. 
Mrs. Mary Hemenway, that princess among 
Ladies Bountiful, told me once the story of his 
change. He made to her a frank statement of 
his situation. He was conscious of power to do 
service; he was married, had children, and was 
embarrassed with care about their bread, butter, 
and education after the usual fashion of the 
scholar. John Fiske said in those days the diffi- 
cult problem of his life was to get enough corn- 
beef for dinner to have hash for breakfast the 
next day. Must he descend to desk and court- 
room work to make a way, or could a way be 
found by which he might do his proper task and 
at the same time be a bread-winner? " Write 
American history," said Mrs. Hemenway, " and 
I will stand behind you." She was inspired with 
the idea of making America in the high sense 
American and saw in the young genius a good 
ally. The chance was embraced and John Fiske 
after that dipped only fitfully into philosophical 
themes, writing, however. The Destiny of Man, 
The Idea of God, Cosmic Roots of Love and Self- 
sacrifice, and Life Everlasting. He gave his 



170 THe L.ast L-eaf 

main strength to a thing worth while, the 
establishment in America of Anglo-Saxon free- 
dom. Would he have served the world better 
had he adhered to profound speculations? As 
the patriarch in a household into which have 
been born a dozen children and grandchildren, I 
have had good opportunity for study. What so 
feeble as the feebleness of the babe ! It depends 
upon its mother for its sustenance, almost for 
its breath and its heart-beats. The sheltering 
arms and the loving breast must always be at 
hand as the very conditions of its existence. I 
have watched in wife and daughters, as what 
grandsire has not, the persistent sleepless care 
which alone kept the baby alive, and noted the 
sweet effusion of affection which the need and 
constant care made to flow abundantly, nor do 
the care and consequent outflow of love cease 
with babyhood. The child must ever be fed, 
clothed, trained, and counselled; and the youth, 
too, of which the baby is father, must be watch- 
fully guided till the stature is completed. The 
rod of Moses smiting the rock evoked the bene- 
ficent water, the unremitting parent-care strik- 
ing the indifferent heart evokes the beautiful 
mother and father love which grows abroad. We 
cannot love children well without loving others, 
their companions, and at last the great worldly 
environment in which they and we all are placed. 
Hence, from the extension of infancy, through a 
period of long years, proceeds at last from the 



TKe Extension of Infancy 171 

hearts which are subjected to its influence the 
noble thing which we call altruism: love for 
others than ourselves and the other high spiritual 
instincts which are the crown of human nature. 
The recognition of the extension of infancy as 
the source from which in our slow evolution 
comes the brightest thing in the universe be- 
longs to our own time. It is perhaps the climax 
of our philosophic speculation. What more 
feeble than the snowflakesi But accumulated 
and compressed they become the glacier which 
may carapace an entire zone and determine its 
configuration into mountain and valley. What 
more feeble than the feebleness of the babe! 
And yet that multiplied by the million through 
aeons of time and over continents of space fash- 
ions humanity after the sublime pattern shown 
on the Mount. If to John Fiske belongs the 
credit of first recognising in the scheme of evolu- 
tion the significance of this mighty factor, the 
extension of infancy (he himself so believed 
and I do not think it can be questioned that 
he was the first to recognise it), what philo- 
sophic thinker has to a greater extent laid the 
world in debt? This I shall not further discuss. 
I am touching in these papers only upon light 
and exterior things, nor am I competent to deal 
with philosophical problems and controversies. 
John Fiske gave his strength to the writing of 
liistory, where, too, there are controversies into 
which I do not propose to enter. I will only 



172 The Last Leaf 

say that I resent tlie account of him which 
makes him to have been a mere populariser 
whose merit lies solely or for the most part in 
the fact that, while appropriating materials ac- 
cumulated by others, he had only Goldsmith's 
faculty of making them graceful and attractive 
to the mass of readers. His philosophical in- 
stinct, on the other hand, discovered, as few 
writers have done, the subtle links through 
which in history facts are related to facts and 
are weighed wisely, in the protagonists, the mo- 
tives and qualities which make them foremost 
figures. He saw unerringly where emphasis 
should be put, what should be salient, what 
subordinate. Too many writers, German espe- 
cially, perhaps, have the fault of " writing a 
subject to its dregs," giving to the unimportant 
undue place. In Fiske's estimation of facts 
there is no failure of proper proportion, the 
great thing is always in the foreground, the 
trifle in shadow or quite unnoticed. To do this 
accurately is a fine power. He delved more 
deeply himself perhaps than many of his critics 
have been willing to acknowledge, but I incline 
to say that his main service to history was in 
detecting with unusual insight the subtle rela- 
tions of cause and effect, links which other and 
sometimes very able men failed adequately to 
recognise. In a high sense he was indeed a 
populariser. He wore upon himself like an 
ample garment a splendid erudition under which 



His L-ove for Mvisic 173 

he moved, however, not at all oppressed or tram- 
melled. Much of the lore of Greece, Rome, the 
Orient, and also of modern peoples was as 
familiar to him as the contents of the morning 
papers. With acumen he selected and his 
memory retained; the cells of his capacious 
brain somehow held it ready for instant use. 
With good discrimination he could touch lightly 
or discourse profoundly as occasion required, his 
learning and insight always telling effectively, 
either at the breakfast-table of the plain citizen, 
or in the pages of the school text-book. " John," 
said such a plain man the other day to a friend 
who also had been in touch with Fiske, " the 
biggest thing that ever came into your life or 
mine was when that broad thinker familiarly 
darkened our doors." The two men stood rev- 
erently under John Fiske's portrait, the auto- 
graph signature underneath seeming in a way 
to connect the living with the dead, acknowledg- 
ing the force of the personality which had made 
real to them as nothing else had ever done the 
deepest and finest things. 

John Fiske was often a guest in my home 
and I have sat, though less frequently, with him 
in his library in Berkeley Street in Cambridge, 
the flowers from the conservatory sending their 
perfumes among the crowded books and the 
south wind breathing pleasantly from the gar- 
den which had been Longfellow's, in the rear, 
to the garden of Howells in front. His passion 



174 The Last Leaf 

for music was scarcely less than his interest in 
speculation and history. He knew well the 
great composers, and had himself composed. 
Though the master of no instrument, he could 
touch the piano with feeling. He had a pleasant 
baritone voice, and nothing gave him more re- 
freshment after a week of study or lecturing 
than to pour himself out in song. His accom- 
panist had need not only of great technical skill 
but of stout vertebrae, and strong wrists; for 
hours at a time the piano stool must be occu- 
pied while the difficult melodies of various lands 
were unriddled and interpreted. Those were in- 
teresting afternoons when, dropping his pen, 
he plunged into music as a strong confident 
swimmer plunges into the stream which he 
especially loves, interpreting with warm feeling 
Mendelssohn and Beethoven, wandering unlost 
in the vocal labyrinths of Dvorak and Wagner, 
but never happier than when interpreting the 
emotions of simple folk-songs, or some noble 
Shakespearian lyrics like " Who is Sylvia, what 
is she, that all the swains commend her? " Music 
stimulated him to vivacity and in the pauses 
would come outbursts of abandon. One day 
the pet dog of a daughter of mine ensconced 
himself unawares under the sofa and was dis- 
respectfully napping while John Fiske sang. In 
a pause the philosopher broke into an animated 
declamation over some matter while standing 
near the sofa, whereat the pug thinking himself 



Story of the Calf 175 

challenged tore out to the front with sudden 
violent barks. The two confronted each other, 
the pug frantically vindicating his dignity while 
the philosopher on his side fixing his eye upon the 
interrupter declaimed and gesticulated. As to 
volubility and sonorousness they stood about 
equal. I am bound to say the pug prevailed. 
John Fiske retired in discomfiture while the pug 
was carried off in triumph in the arms of his 
little mistress. He had fairly barked the great 
man down. I once shared with him the misery 
of being a butt. In St. Louis in those days the 
symposium was held in honour, and particularly 
]^. O. Nelson, the well-known profit-sharing cap- 
tain of industry, was the entertainer of select 
groups whose geniality was stimulated by modest 
potations of Anheuser-Bush, in St. Louis al- 
ways the Castor and Pollux in every convivial 
firmament. Such a symposium was once held 
in special honour of Dr. Edward Waldo Emer- 
son, a transient visitor. "• Dr. Emerson," said 
a guest, " in the diary of your father just edited 
by you occurs a passage which needs illumina- 
tion. ^ Edward and I tried this morning for 
three quarters of an hour to get the calf into 
the barn without success. The Irish girl stuck 
her finger into his mouth and got the calf in 
in two minutes. I like folks that can do 
things.' Now," said the guest, " we all know 
what became of Emerson, we all know what be- 
came of Edward, for you are here to-night, but 



176 TKe Last Leaf 

what became of the Irish girl and the calf? " 
Dr. Emerson laughingly explained the probable 
fate of the girl and the calf, and in the hilarity 
that followed, the question arose as to why the 
Irish girl's finger had been so persuasive. I, 
city-bred and green as grass as to country lore, 
rashly attempted to explain ; the inserted finger 
gave a good purchase on the calf which in its 
pain became at once tractable, but the men 
present who had been farm-boys, with loud 
laughter ridiculed the suggestion. Did I not 
know that nature had provided a conduit 
through which the needed sustenance was con- 
veyed from the maternal udder, and that it was 
quite possible to delude the unsuspecting calf 
into the belief that the slyly inserted finger was 
that conduit? The triumph of the Irish girl 
was explained, and I sank back, covered with 
confusion. Fiske, however, blurted out : " Why, 
I never should have thought of that in all my 
life," whereat he too became the target of 
ridicule. 

I never saw John Fiske happier than once 
at Concord. Our host had invited us for a 
day and had prepared a programme that only 
Concord could furnish. The prelude was a per- 
formance of the Andante to a Sonata of Rubin- 
stein, Opus 12, rendered exquisitely by the 
daughter of our host. I saw the great frame 
of. my fellow-guest heave with emotion while his 
breath came almost in sobs as his spirit re- 



John KisKe at Concord 177 

sponded to the music. Then came a canoe-trip 
on the river to which John Fiske joyfully as- 
sented though some of the rest of us were not 
without apprehension. Fiske in a canoe was a 
ticklish proposition, but there he was at last, 
comfortably recumbent, his head propped up on 
cushions, serenely at ease though a very narrow 
margin intervened between water-line and gun- 
wale. The performer of the Sonata, who was as 
deft at the paddle as she was at the piano, served 
as his pilot and propeller while the rest of us 
formed an escort which could be turned into a 
rescue party if occasion required. A stout, ca- 
pacious rowboat followed immediately in the wake 
of the canoe. We went down the dark, placid 
current in the fine summer weather to the Battle- 
ground, and then looked into the solemn forest 
aisle which arches over the narrow Assabeth. The 
day was perfect, the flowers and birds were at 
their best, the pleasant nature was all about us. 
All this John Fiske drank in to the full but 
still more was he touched by the great associa- 
tions of the environment. From the bank yonder 
had been " fired the shot heard round the 
world." The hilltops, meadows, the gentle 
river had been loved and frequented by Haw- 
thorne, Thoreau, and Emerson; in these sur- 
roundings had bloomed forth the finest flowering 
of American literature. No heart could be more 
sensitive than was his to influences of this kind. 
As we moved cautiously about him, anxious about 



178 THe Last Leaf 

the equilibrium, though he was calm, he dis- 
coursed with animation. The afternoon waned 
gloriously into the dusk of the happy day. 

The little hill-town of Petersham in the back 
of Worcester County was John Fiske's summer 
home, a spot he tenderly loved. It is a retired 
place made very attractive in later years through 
the agency of his brother-in-law, who with wise 
and kindly art has added to the natural beauty. 
I saw John Fiske here in his home of homes to 
which his heart clung more and more fondly as 
bis end approached. The weight of his great 
body, accumulating morbidly in a way which 
could not be counteracted, fairly overwhelmed 
at last his bright and noble life. As the doctors 
put it, a heart made for a frame of one hundred 
and sixty pounds could not do the work for 
three hundred. When, in his w^eakness, death 
was suggested to him as probably near, " Death ! " 
said he simply and sweetly, " why, that only 
means going to Petersham to stay ! " and there 
among the flowers and fields, remote from the 
world, though his spirit remains widely and 
solemnly pervasive, he has gone to stay. 



CHAPTER VII 

ENGLISH AND GERMAN HISTORIANS 

WHEN I went to England in 1886 to col- 
lect materials for a life of Young Sir 
Henry Vane, John Fiske gave me a letter to Dr. 
Richard Garnett, then Superintendent of the 
Reading Room in the British Museum. He after- 
wards became Sir Richard Garnett and was 
promoted to be Keeper of Printed Books, per- 
haps the highest position among the librarians 
of the world, a post to which he did honour. Dr. 
Garnett, slender and alert, the heaped-up litter 
of volumes and manuscripts in his study telling 
at a glance where his tastes lay, was nevertheless 
as he needed to be most practical and business- 
like. Though an accomplished litterateur touch- 
ing with versatility poetry, criticism, history, 
philosophy, and still other fields, this was his 
hobby only, his main work being when I knew 
him to make available for readers crowding 
from all lands seeking information of all kinds, 
the treasures of this wonderful store-house. He 
treated me with the kindest courtesy, but I 
have no reason to feel that I was an excep- 

179 



i8o THe Last Leaf 

tion. He stood on that threshold, a wel- 
comer of all scholars, for his good nature wat 
no more marked than the comprehensiveness of 
his information and the dexterity with which 
without the least delay, he put into the hands 
of each searcher the needed books. Perhaps it 
was an unusual favour that, influenced no 
doubt, by my good introduction, he took a half- 
hour out of his busy morning to conduct me him- 
self tlirough the Egyptian collection. We passed 
rapidly among *statues and hieroglyphics, his 
abundant knowledge appearing transiently as he 
touched upon object after object while at the 
same time in an incisive and witty vein he spoke 
of America and the events of the day. Pausing 
at last before the great scarabreus of polished 
syenite whose huge size required a place in the 
centre of the corridor, he said with a twinkle, 
" I must tell you a story about this of which 
one of your countrymen is the hero. I was 
walking with him here in the collection and ex- 
pected from him some expression of awe, but like 
so many of you Americans, lie wouldn't admit 
that he saw anything that could n't be paralleled 
in the United States until we stood before the 
scaraba?us. Here liis mood changed; his face 
fell, he slowly walked around the scarabaeus 
three times and then exclaimed, ' It 's the all- 
firedest, biggest bug I ever saw in all my born 
days • " I I palliated patriotically the over- 
breezy nonchalance of my countryman and 



Samuel Ra-wson Gardiner i8i 

thought I had got at the bottom of the joke, but 
that evening at a little tea I was undeceived. 
A small company were present of men and 
women, talk flowed easily and when it came my 
turn I told the story of the Yankee and the 
scarabseus which I had heard that day. As I 
brought out with emphasis the " all-firedest, big- 
gest hug," I noticed that a frost fell on the 
mirth, silence reigned for a moment interrupted 
only by gasps from the ladies. What im- 
propriety had I committed? Presently a little 
man behind the coffee-urn at the far end of the 
table, whom I had heard was a bit of a scientist, 
piped up : " Perhaps the Professor does n't know 
that in England, when we talk about bugs, we 
mean that cimex which makes intolerable even 
the most comfortable bed." At last I had Dr. 
Garnett's story in its full force. 

When I explained to Dr. Garnett my errand, 
an elaborate investigation of an historic figure, 
said he : " You must know Samuel Kawson 
Gardiner, the best living authority for the period 
of the English Civil War. Now Dr. Gardiner 
is peculiar. His great history of that period as 
yet takes in nothing later than 1642. Up to 
that date he will have all the information and 
help you generously. Of the time beyond that 
date he will have nothing to say, be mute as a 
dumb man. He has not finished his investiga- 
tions and has a morbid caution about making 
any suggestion based on incomplete data." A 



182 The Last Leaf 

day or two afterward I was in the Public Record 
Office in Fetter Lane, the roomy fire-proof struc- 
ture which holds the archives of England. You 
sit in the Search Room, a most interesting place. 
Rolls and dusty tomes lie heaped about you, the 
attendants go back and forth with long strips of 
parchment knotted together by thongs, hanging 
down to the floor before and beliind, written over 
by the fingers of scribes in the mediseval days 
and sometimes in the Dark Ages. The past be- 
comes very real to you as you scan Domes Day 
Book which once was constantly under the eye 
of William the Conqueror, or the documents of 
kings who reigned before the Plantagenets. As 
I sat busy with some original letters of Henry 
Vane, written by him when a boy in Germany 
in the heart of the Thirty Years' War, a vigor- 
ous brown-haired man came up to me with a 
pleasant smile and introduced himself as Samuel 
Rawson Gardiner. Dr. Garnett had told him 
about me and about my especial quest, and with 
rare kindness, he offered to give me hints. It was 
for me a fortunate encounter, for no other man 
knew, as Gardiner did, the ground I desired to 
cover. He put into my hands old books, unprinted 
diaries, scraps of paper inscribed by great 
figures in historic moments, the solid sources, 
and also the waifs and strays from which proper 
history must be built up. He would look in 
upon me time after time in the Search Room ; in 
the Reading Room of the British Museum we sat 



Samuel Ra'wson Gardiner 183 

side by side under the great dome. We were 
working in the same field and the experienced 
master passed over to the neophyte the yellow 
papers and mildewed volumes in which he was 
digging, with suggestions as to how I might get 
out of the chaff the wheat that I wanted. He 
invited me to his home at Bromley in Kent, 
where he allowed me to read the proofs of the 
volume in his own great series which was just 
then in press. It related to matters that were 
vital to my purpose and I had the rare pleasure 
of reading a masterly work and seeing how 
the workman built, inserting into his draft count- 
less marginal emendations, the application of 
sober second thought to the original conception. 
I spent the best part of the night in review and 
it was for me a training well worth the sacrifice 
of sleep. In the pleasant July afternoon we sat 
down to tea in the little shaded garden where 
I met the son and daughter of my host and also 
Mrs. Gardiner, an accomplished writer and his 
associate in his labours. The interval between 
tea and dinner we filled up with a long walk 
over the fields of Kent during which appeared 
the social side of the man. He told me with 
modesty that he was descended from Cromwell 
through Ireton, and the vigour of his stride, with 
which I found it sometimes hard to keep up, 
made it plain that he was of stalwart stock and 
might have marched with the Ironsides. A day 
or two later he bade me good-bye; he and his 



1 84 TKe L-ast I^eaf 

wife departing for the continent for a long 
bicycle tour. The indefatigable scholar was no 
less capable in the fields and on the high road 
than in alcoves and the Search Room. 

Lecky was not in England at the time of my 
visit and I can only claim to have had with 
him an epistolary acquaintance. To some ex- 
tent I have worked on the same themes with 
him, and preserve among my treasures certain 
letters in which he made me feel that he re- 
garded my accomplishment as not unworthy. 
Sir Charles Dilke and the Bishop of Oxford, 
William Stubbs, author of the great Constitu- 
tional History, I also never met, but I have 
letters from them which I keep with those of 
Lecky as things which my children will prize. 
With Edward A. Freeman, however, I came into 
cordial relations, a character well worthy of a 
sketch. He once came to America where with 
his fine English distinction behind him he met 
a good reception. He deported himself after the 
fashion of manj^ another great Englishman, 
somewhat clumsily. At St. Louis he amusingly 
misapprehended conditions. Remembering the 
origin of the city he took it for granted that 
the audience which greeted him was for the 
most part of French descent, whereas probably 
not a dozen persons present had a trace of 
French blood in their veins. Because back- 
woodsmen a few generations before had pos- 
sessed that region he took it for granted that 



Edward A. Freeman 185 

we were backwoodsmen still. He addressed us 
under these misconceptions, the result being a 
" talking down " to a company of supposedly 
Latin extraction and quite illiterate. The fact 
was that the crowd, Anglo-Saxon with a strong 
infusion of German, was made up of people of 
high intelligence, the best whom the city could 
furnish, a city at the time noted for its interest 
in philosophical pursuits and the home of a 
highly educated class. Freeman's well-meant re- 
marks would have seemed elementary to an 
audience of school-children. The address was 
quite inadequate and the unfortunate visitor had 
a rather cool reception. Freeman was only one 
of many in all this. The astronomer R. A. 
Proctor came to similar grief for a similar 
gaucJierie, and even so famous a man as Lord 
Kelvin suffered in like manner. I have been 
told that at Yale University when addressing a 
college audience zealous for their own institu- 
tion, he stumbled badly on the threshold by en- 
larging on the great privilege he was enjoying 
in speaking to the students of Cornell, proceed- 
ing blandly under the conviction that he was at 
Ithaca instead of under the elms of New Haven. 
But this clumsiness in Freeman and in others 
was only a surface blemish. He was a great 
writer treating with profound learning the story 
of Greece and Rome and South-western Europe 
in general, and illuminating as probably no other 
man has done the distant Saxon and early Nor- 



I86 The Last Leaf 

man dimnesses that lie in the background of 
our own past. I held him in thorough respect 
and when, following an article I had prepared 
in London for the Pall Mall Gazette, I received 
a polite note from him inviting me to come to 
see him at Somerleaze near Wells, I was much 
rejoiced. I w^ent thither, passing through the 
beautiful green heart of England. In Wiltshire 
from the car-window I caught sight of a distant 
down on which, the substratum of chalk show- 
ing through the turf skilfully cut away, ap- 
peared the figure of a gigantic white horse, the 
memorial of an old Saxon battle ; thence passing 
near Glastonbury and skirting the haunts of 
ancient Druids in the Mendip Hills, I was attuned 
for a meeting with a scholar who more than any 
other man of the time had aroused interest in 
the old life of England. I alighted at Wells 
where a trap was waiting, and drove between 
hedgerows for two miles to the secluded man- 
sion. It lay back from the road, a roomy 
manor house thickly surrounded by groves and 
gardens. I was put at ease at once by the 
friendly welcome of Mrs. Freeman, a charming 
hostess who met me at the door. Freeman soon 
entered, a veteran of sixty, his florid English 
face set off by a long beard, and hair rather 
dislievelled, tawny, and streaked with gray. 
Like Gardiner he was of vigorous mould and 
we presently strode off together through the 
lanes of the estate with the sweet landscape all 



At Somerleaze 187 

about us. His talk was animated and related 
for the most part to the objects which we 
passed and the points that came into view on 
the more distant hills. It was rather the talk 
of a local antiquary than of a historian in a 
comprehensive sense, though now and then a 
quickly uttered phrase linked a trifling detail 
with the great world movement; the spirit was 
most kindly. Returning to the house he stooped 
to the ground and picked up a handsome pea- 
cock's feather which he gave with a bow as a 
souvenir of the walk. At dinner we met Miss 
Freeman, an accomplished daughter. There was 
only one guest besides myself, a man whom I 
felt it was good fortune to meet. It was the 
Rev. William Hunt, since that time well known 
as a large contributor to Leslie Stephen's great 
Dictionary of National Biography, President of 
the English Historical Society, and author of 
many valuable works. It so happened that a 
few weeks before, my Life of Samuel Adams had 
come under his notice and gained his approval, 
which he had expressed in a cordial fashion in 
the Saturday Review by an article which had 
caused me much satisfaction. An evening fol- 
lowed full of interesting things. Miss Freeman 
played the piano for us with much skill, and 
then came a most animated talk which, though 
genial, w^as critically pungent. The United 
States was often sharply attacked and I was 
put to all my resources to parry the prods that 



l88 XHe Last Leaf 

were directed at our weak places. I did not 
escape some personal banter. Feeling that I was 
in a congenial atmosphere I announced with 
warmth my persistent love for England, though 
my stock had been fixed in America since 1635. 
I spoke of a cherished tradition of my family. 
The chronicler, Florence of Worcester, describes 
an ancient battle in the year of 1016 between 
Edmond Ironside and the Danes. The battle 
was close and the Danes at one point had taken 
captive a Saxon champion who looked very much 
like the king. By cutting off his head and holding 
it up before the Saxon army they well-nigh pro- 
duced a panic, for the Saxons believed that their 
king was slain, and Edmond had a lively quarter 
of an hour in correcting the error and restoring 
order. He finally did so and won victory at 
last. The chronicler gave the name of the Saxon 
who thus suffered untimely decapitation as 
Hosmer. I told the story and Freeman at once 
insisted that it should be confirmed. He sent 
his daughter to the library, who returned bear- 
ing a huge tome containing the chronicle of 
Florence of Worcester. Freeman turned at once 
to the date, 1016, and there was the passage in 
the quaint mediaeval Latin. It was indeed a 
Hosmer who unwittingly had so nearly brought 
Edmond Ironside to grief. " Was I descended 
from the man? " queried Freeman. Quite proud 
that my story had been substantiated and per- 
haps a bit vainglorious over the fact that a man 



The CatKedral of Wells 189 

of my name had looked like a king, I was not 
glow in saying that I probably was, that my 
line for six hundred years after that date, honest 
yeomen, had lived near the spot, in the fields of 
Kent. Freeman assented to the probability, but 
it was suggested by others j)resent that there 
was a further tradition. The Hosmer of 1016 
had lost his head, the Hosmers since that day had 
been constantly losing theirs, in fact, there had 
been no man of that name since that time 
in England who had any head worth speaking 
of, indeed they were said to be born without 
heads. Had this curious heredity been trans- 
mitted to the American line? I was forced to 
admit with confusion that I could cite no cir- 
cumstances to rebut the suspicion, but all was 
good-natured though pungent, and when we 
broke up I retired to the guest chamber in a 
pleasant excitement. Freeman, who conducted 
me himself, brought the guest-book, calling my 
attention to the fact that the chamber had 
shortly before been occupied by Gladstone. The 
next morning we drove to Wells where, under 
the guidance of Freeman and Mr. Hunt, I studied 
for some hours the beautiful cathedral. It is not 
so large as many cathedrals, but few of them 
are more interesting. The front is finely im- 
pressive; a curious, inverted arch in the choir 
which descends from the ceiling to meet an arch 
rising from the floor at a point midway between 
the roof and pavement is a unique thing in 



190 TKe Last Leaf 

architecture, a master-stroke of the mediaeval 
builder who solved a problem of construction 
and at the same time produced a thing of beauty. 
I remember, too, in a chapel, an example of a 
central column rising like a slender stem of a 
lily and foliating at the top into a graceful 
tracery, springing from the columns which sur- 
round and enclose the space. All this is ela- 
borated with exquisite detail in the v/hite stone. 
My guides, who were full of feeling for the 
architectural perfection, knew well the story of 
the builders and the interesting events with 
which through the centuries a masterpiece had 
been associated. It was a charming visit closed, 
appropriately, by this inspection under Free- 
man's guidance, of the cathedral of Wells. 

Goldwin Smith was a cosmopolite; a citizen 
as much of Canada and the United States as of 
England; a man indeed who would have pre- 
ferred to call himself a citizen of the world. 
But in England he was born and bred and be- 
gan his career; under the Union Jack he died, 
and he may rightly be classed as an English 
historian. My acquaintance with Goldwin Smith 
began a quarter of a century back, in the inter- 
change of notes and books. I was interested in 
the same fields which he had illustrated. I 
looked upon him as more than any other writer, 
perhaps, my master. I was in love with his 
spirit from the first and thought that no other 
man had considered so well topics connected 



Cold'win SmitK 191 

with the unity of English-speaking men in a 
broad bond of brotherhood. I did not set eyes 
on him until 1903, being for that year President 
of the American Library Association which was 
to meet at Niagara Falls. I invited Goldwin 
Smith to give the principal address. The li- 
brarians of Canada, as well as the United States, 
were to assemble on the frontier between the 
two countries, and it seemed desirable that a 
man standing under two flags should be spokes- 
man and this character fitted Goldwin Smith 
precisely. But that year he became eighty years 
old. In the spring he was ill and did not dare 
to undertake in June an elaborate address. 
When we assembled at Xiagara Falls, however, 
I found him there. He had come from Toronto 
to show his good-will and he spoke several times 
in our meetings: deliverances which, while 
neither long nor formal, were well worth hearing. 
He was a stately presence, tall, slender, and erect 
even at eighty, with a commanding face and 
head which had every trait of dignity. I had 
several opportunities for private talk and it ap- 
peared that his natural force was by no means 
abated. It would no doubt be more just to class 
him as a critic in politics, literature, and philo- 
sophy rather than an historian, but in the latter 
capacity, too, his service was great. His talk 
was fluent, incisive, and put forward without 
reference to what might be the prejudices or 
indeed the well-based principles of his listeners. 



igr2 THe Last Leaf 

He lashed bitterly the Congress of the United 
States for refusing through fear of Irish disap- 
proval to do honour to John Bright. His tongue 
was a sword and cut sharply, and while he won 
respect always, often excited opposition and 
sometimes hatred. Napoleon in particular was 
a bete noire, to whom he denied even the pos- 
session of military genius. His courage was 
serene and he was quite indifferent as to whether 
he w^ere hissed or applauded. He moved in a 
lofty atmosphere and the praise and blame of 
men counted for little with him, as on his high 
plane he discussed and judged. But it was im- 
possible to entertain for Goldwin Smith any 
other feeling than profound respect, his accom- 
plishments were vast, his memory unfailing, his 
ideals the highest, his sense of justice the keen- 
est. His was a nature perhaps to evoke venera- 
tion rather than affection, and yet to men worthy 
of it he could be heartily cordial and friendly. 
The inscription on the stone erected to his 
memory at Cornell University is " Above all na- 
tions is humanity.'' In his thought any limita- 
tion of the sympathies within the comparatively 
narrow bounds of one country was a vice rather 
than a virtue, and no nation was worthy to en- 
dure which did not stand for the good of the 
world at large ; into love for all humanity nar- 
rower affections should emerge. He invited me 
to spend some days at the Grange at Toronto 
in his beautiful home, but circumstances made 



James Bryce 193 

it impossible. I am glad to have seen Goldwin 
Smith at Niagara; that majestic environment 
befitted the subduing stateliness of his presence, 
his intellect, power, and elevation of view. He 
was one of the most exalted men I have ever 
known. 

Of my friend Bishop Phillips Brooks, I hope 
to say something by-and-by. I only mention 
now that when I asked him in 1886 for a letter 
or two to friends in England, whither I was 
going to collect material for a life of the colo- 
nial governor, he heartily said, " I will give 
you a letter to the best Englishman I know, and 
that is James Bryce." 

Arriving one July day in London, I posted 
my letter and received at once an invitation from 
Mr. Bryce to call upon him in Downing Street, 
where, as Under Secretary of State, he then made 
his official home. 

Mark Twain's tears over the grave of Adam, 
a relative buried in a strange land, all will re- 
call. On a basis as good perhaps, I walked 
through Downing Street with a certain sense of 
proprietorship, for did it not bear the name and 
had it not been the home of my brother in the 
pleasant Harvard bond, Sir George Downing, of 
the class of 1642? In the ante-room with its 
upholstery of dark-green leather I mused for 
a few minutes alone, over diplomatic conferences 
of which it had probably been the scene, but Mr. 
Bryce quickly entered, slight and sinewy, in his 
13 



194 THe Last Leaf 

best years, kindly, courteous to the man sent by 
a friend whom he held among the closest. Bryce 
at that time was on the threshold of his fame. 
He had written The Holy Roman Empire which 
I knew well. He had been Regius Professor at 
Oxford, whose shades he had not long before 
forsaken for politics. That he had a special in- 
terest in and knowledge of America, the world 
did not know. He apologised for turning me 
off briefly then, but " Come to dinner," said he, 
" at my house to-night in Bryanstone Square." 
I was prompt to keep the appointment. A 
drizzle filtered through the night as the cab 
arrived at the door, but there was a cheery light 
in the windows and a warm welcome to the en- 
tering guest. There were three or four besides 
myself; a young officer just home from the cam- 
paign in the Soudan, Dr. Richter the authority 
in music and art, and the brother and sister of 
the host. I felt it a high distinction that I 
handed out to dinner the stately lady, the mother 
of my host. The conversation was general. Bits 
of African experience from the young soldier, 
glimpses into Richter's special fields, and a con- 
tribution or two from the Mississippi Valley, 
from me. In the talk that followed the dinner 
Mr. Bryce showed himself at home in German 
as much as in English, but what surprised me 
most was his puzzling curiosity about minutiae 
of our own politics. Why did the Mayor of 
Oshkosh on such and such dates veto the pro- 



XHe Hoxxse of Commons 195 

positions of the aldermen as to the gas supply? 
And why did the supervisors of Pike County, 
Missouri, pass such and such ordinances as re- 
gards the keeping of dogs? These, or similar 
questions were fired at me rapidly, uttered with 
a keen attention as to my reply. I was quite 
confused and lame on what was supposedly my 
own ground. How queer, I thought, was the 
interest and the knowledge of this stranger. 
But in a few months I felt better. The Ameri- 
can Commonwealth appeared, revealing Bryce as 
a man who had set foot in almost our every State 
and Territory, and who had an intimacy with 
America such as no American even possessed. 

I am speaking here of historians, but may 
appropriately give a little space to an account 
of that wonderful acre or two of ground at West- 
minster, where for so many centuries the history 
of the English-speaking race has been to such 
an extent focused. 

In looking up Young Sir Henry Vane, it 
seemed fitting to have some knowledge of Par- 
liament, and I welcomed the chance when, on 
the 19th of August, 1886, Parliament convened. 
It was a time of agitation. At the election just 
previous the Liberals, with Gladstone at the head 
of the Cabinet, had undergone defeat and the 
Conservatives had come in with Lord Randolph 
Churchill as Chancellor of the Exchequer. The 
first night was sure to be full of turmoil and 
excitement. Through Mr, Bryce's good offices I 



196 TKe Last Leaf 

had a seat in the Strangers' Gallery. The stu- 
dent of history must always tread the precincts 
of Westminster with awe. There attached to 
the Abbey is the Chapter House. The central 
column divides overhead into the groins that 
form the arched ceiling, the stones at its base 
still bearing a stain from the rubbing elbows 
of mediaeval legislators, the floor worn by their 
hurrying feet, for from the time of Edward I. 
the Chapter House remained for centuries 
the legislative meeting-place. The old St. 
Stephen's Chapel to which Parliament at length 
removed was burned some eighty years since, 
but Westminster Hall, its attachment — the great 
hall of William Rufus, escaped and the new 
buildings of Parliament stand on the site of its 
former home. The present House of Commons 
occupies the ground of the old Chapel and in 
size and arrangement differs little from it. The 
Hall is small. The seven hundred members 
seated on the benches which slope up from the 
centre, crowd the floor space, while the galleries 
for the press at one end, for strangers at the other, 
and for the use of the Lords and the Diplomatic 
corps at the sides give only meagre accommoda- 
tion. I passed into the building at nightfall, 
getting soul-stirring glimpses into the great area 
of Westminster Hall, in which burned only one 
far-away light. Its grandeur was more impres- 
sive in the dimness than in the glare. The lofty 
associations of the spot, coronations of kings. 



Sir Henry Norman 197 

the reverberations of eloquence, the illustrious 
victims that had gone out from its tribunal to 
the scaffold thronged in my thought as I mo- 
mentarily paused. But time pressed and I 
passed on to the central Hall where I stood in 
a jostling crowd, absorbed in the present with 
little thought of the fine frescoes that lined the 
walls or of the history that had been made in 
that environment. I was to send in my card 
to Mr. Bryce and while I stood puzzled as to 
what course to take, a good friend came to my 
side in the person of Sir Henry Norman. He 
had not then received his knightly title but was 
simply assistant to W, T. Stead on the Pall Mall 
Gazette, pushing his way, but already marked for 
a distinguished and eccentric career. He came 
to x\merica as a youth and entered the Harvard 
Theological School. Inverting his pyramid, after 
beginning with the cone, he put in the base, tak- 
ing up the work of undergraduate, and studying 
for an A.B. At Harvard he is best remembered 
as Creon in the (Edipus Tyrannus, where 
his handsome face and figure and mellifluous 
Greek won much admiration. Soon after, he 
cast to the winds both his Greek and theology 
and was in London fighting his way in the 
Press. Since then he has become famous for 
Oriental travel and observation, in which field 
he is an authority, and also as a member of 
Parliament. A friendship with him had been 
conciliated for me by a good letter from Edwin 



198 The Last Leaf 

D. Mead, and I was glad to have him by my 
side that night. Through his help I soon was 
in the hands of Mr. Brjce and under his guid- 
ance found the way to my appointed seat. The 
House was in an uproar as I entered and from 
my point of vantage I looked down upon the 
scene, undignified, but full of most virile life. 
At the opposite end of the Hall sat Speaker 
Peel, in gown and wig, his sonorous cries of 
" Order ! order ! " availing little it seemed, to 
quiet the assembly. In the centre of the Cham- 
ber stood the famous table, the mace reposing 
at the end, the symbol that the House was in 
formal session. On one side sat the members 
of the new Cabinet, the foremost and most in- 
teresting figure. Lord Randolph Churchill. Op- 
posite to them across the width of the table were 
the leaders of the opposition, Gladstone at the 
fore. The benches were densely crowded with 
members. Under my feet where I could not see 
them were the Irish members, not visible but 
noisily audible.. Many men of note were in 
their seats that night. A powerful voice was 
ringing through the Chamber as I took my seat, 
which I soon found was that of Bradlaugh. His 
utterance was a sustained declamation. But 
there were ejaculations, sometimes mere hoots 
and cat-calls, sometimes crisply-shouted sen- 
tences rose into the air. " I belong to a society 
for the abolition of the House of Lords," came 
thundering up. It was from Sir Wilfred Law- 



Lord RandolpK CKvircKill 199 

SOD, the radical from Carlisle, whose statue now 
stands on the Thames Embankment. Lord Ran- 
dolph Churchill made that night what I suppose 
was the great speech of his life, for some two 
hours facing the Irish members waging a forensic 
battle, memorable for even the House of Com- 
mons. From my perch I looked directly into 
his face at a distance of not many feet as he 
confronted the Irish crowd. Rather short of 
stature, he was a compact figure, and his face 
had in it combative energy as the marked char- 
acteristic. He outlined the policy of the new 
government with serene indifference to the 
stormy disapproval which almost every sentence 
evoked. When the outcry became deafening, he 
paused with a grim smile on his bull-dog face 
until the interruption wore itself out. " This 
disturbance makes no difference to me," he would 
quietly say, " I am only sorry to have the time 
of the House wasted in such unreasonable fash- 
ion." Then would come another prod and a new 
chorus of howls rolling thunderously from the 
cavern under my feet. It is not in line with 
my present plan to describe this speech; that 
may be found in Hansard under the date. I 
touch only on the outside manner as he fought 
his fight. It was a fine example of cool, imper- 
turbable, unshrinking assault, and I thought 
that in some such way his ancestor, the great 
Duke of Marlboro, might have ruled the hour at 
Blenheim and Malplaquet. Many years after it 



200 



TKe Last Leaf 



fell to me to introduce to an audience his son 
Winston Churcliill who, when his father was 
Chancellor of the Exchequer, was a schoolboy at 
Harrow. I took occasion to describe briefly the 
battle I had seen his father wage at West- 
minster. It pleased Winston Churchill then fresh 
from the fields of South Africa. " That was in- 
deed a great speech of my father's," he said. Since 
then the son has developed into a combatant 
probably not less formidable than his forebears. 

This was well worth while for me, desiring 
to see the Parliament of England in its most 
interesting moods, but something came later 
which I treasure more. While the conflict pro- 
ceeded, in his place near the mace but a yard 
or two distant from the conspicuous figure sat 
Gladstone. I had seen him enter the House, a 
massive frame dressed in a dark frock-coat which 
hung handsomely upon his broad shoulders, with 
the strong head and face above, set in a lion- 
like mane of disordered hair. He sat unmoved 
and quiet throughout the conflict as he might 
have done at a ladies' tea-party, but now he rose 
to speak. At once complete silence pervaded 
the Chamber. I believe I have never seen so 
impressive an exhibition of the power of a great 
personality. Foes as well as friends waited al- 
most breathless for the words that were to come. 
It was a time of crisis. He had just met de- 
feat. What could the discredited leader say? 

He began in a voice scarcely above a whisper. 



Gladstone 201 

though in the silence it was distinctly audible, 
but the tones strengthened and deepened as he 
proceeded. His audience hung upon his every 
word, and so he discoursed for half an hour. 
It was not a great speech, — a series of calm, 
unimpassioned statements in which clearness of 
phrase and absolute abstention from aggressive 
attack upon his opponents were the most marked 
characteristics. It was courteous toward friend 
and foe, and foes no less than friends received 
each clear-cut sentence with attention most re- 
spectful. I was a bit disappointed not to see 
the old lion aroused and in his grandeur. But 
it is a thing to prize that I witnessed a mani- 
festation made in his full strength and in the 
acme of his dominance. It was worth while to 
see that even in no great mood, the force of 
his leadership was recognised and reserve power 
of the man fully felt. Like every Achilles, 
Gladstone was held by the heel when dipped. One 
may well feel that he came short as a theologian. 
The scholars slight his Homeric disquisitions. 
Consistency was a virtue which he probably too 
often scouted, but his high purpose, his spotless- 
ness of spirit, and strong control of men no one 
can gainsay. In the slang of the street of that 
time he was the " G. O. M.," the Grand Old Man 
as well to those who fought him as to those who 
loved him. An impressive incident of the ses- 
sion occurred in the address of the " MtDver of 
the Queen's Speech." The orator in brilliant 



202 THe Last Leaf 

court attire, a suit of plum-coloured velvet with 
full wig and small-clothes which seemed almost 
the only bit of colour in the soberly, sometimes 
rather shabbily, dressed assemblage, a costume 
which through long tradition attaches to the 
function which he discharged, prefaced his re- 
marks with this tribute : " However we may 
dififer from the honourable member for Mid- 
lothian, we are all willing to admit that he is 
the most illustrious of living Englishmen." In 
spite of the general bitterness of the tumultuous 
controversy, one felt that there lay beneath it 
all a certain fine magnanimity. Both Liberal 
and Tory believed in the substantial patriotism 
and good purpose of the adversary as a funda- 
mental concession and that all were seeking the 
best welfare of England. The differences re- 
garded only the expedients which were proper 
for the moment. One could see that foes furious 
in the arena might at the same time be closest 
personal friends. It was not a riddle that in 
the tea-rooms and the smoking-rooms Greek and 
Trojan could sit together in friendly tete-a-tete, 
or that such incidents could occur as the genial 
congratulations extended by Gladstone to Joseph 
Chamberlain over the fine promise of his son 
Austin Chamberlain making his debut in Par- 
liament ; congratulations extended when the two 
statesmen were at swords' points, — a friendly 
talk as it were, through helmet bars when the 
slash was at the sharpest. 



Parliament of England 203 

As I went home that night, through the streets 
of London, my mind and heart were full. My 
special studies at the moment were familiarising 
me with what lay behind the scene which I had 
just beheld. In similar fashion in the days 
of Edward I. and Simon De Montfort, the 
Commons of England, then struggling up, had 
wrestled in the narrow Chapter House. And so 
they had fought in the Lancastrian time; and 
after the Tudor incubus had been lifted off. So 
under the Stuarts had the wrangling proceeded 
from which came at length the " Petition of 
Right." Substituting the doublet and the steeple 
hat for their modern equivalents, the spectacle of 
the Long Parliament must have been very similar. 
Speaker Lenthall no doubt shouted " Order ! 
Order ! " as did his succesor Speaker Peel, while 
Pym, Hampden, Cromwell, and Vane passionately 
inveighed against Prelacy and the " Man of 
Blood," as I had just heard the Radicals of the 
Victorian era overwhelm with diatribe the ob- 
structors of the popular will. Then, during the 
subsoiling which the land, growing arid and 
worthless through mediaeval blight, underwent in 
1832 and after, when the Reform Bill and its suc- 
cessors, like deeply penetrating plows, threw to 
the surface much that was unsightly, yet full of 
potentialities for good, the spot was the same. The 
conditions and the environment looking at it in 
the large were not widely different, the ancient 
Anglo-Saxon freedom struggling ever for its foot- 



204 THe Last Leaf 

hold as the centuries lapse, now precariously 
uncertain as Privilege and Prerogative push 
hotly, now fixed and strong in great moments 
of triumph; and the end is not yet. In the 
earlier time the destinies of America were closely 
interlocked with England and came up no less 
for decision in the great arena at Westminster. 
The destinies of the two peoples are scarcely less 
interlocked at the present moment. We are 
gravitating toward closer brotherhood, and the 
thoughtful American sees reason to study with 
the deepest interest each passage of arms in the 
ancient memorable arena. 

I saw in Germany in 1870, usually through 
the good offices of Bancroft, our minister, the 
most eminent historians of that day. Giese- 
brecht and von Raumur were no longer living, 
but men were still in the foreground to the full 
as illustrious. Heidelberg in those days was 
relatively a more conspicuous university than at 
present. Its great men remain to it, though 
the process of absorption was beginning which 
at last carried the more distinguished lights to 
Berlin. The lovely little town, whose streets for 
nearly six hundred years have throbbed with the 
often boisterous life of the student population, 
is at its best in the spring and early summer. 
The Neckar ripples tumultuously into the broad 
Rhine plain, from which towers to the height of 
two thousand feet the romantic Odenwald. From 



von XreitscKKe 205 

some ruin of ancient watcli-tower or cloister on 
the lieiglit, entrancing views spread out, the land- 
scape holding the venerable towns of Worms 
and Speyer, each with its cathedral dominating 
the clustered dwellings, while the lordly Rhine 
pours its flood northward — a stream of gold 
when in the late afternoon it glows in the sun- 
set. The old castle stands on its height, more 
beautiful in its decay, with ivy clinging about 
the broken arches, and the towers wrecked by the 
powder-bursts of ancient wars, than it could ever 
have been when unshaken. 

Among the professors at Heidelberg, von 
Treitschke was one of the most eminent, and it 
was my privilege one day to hear him lecture 
on a theme which stirred him — tlie battle of 
Leipsic, the great Volkerschlacht of 1813, when 
Germany cruelly clipped the pinions of the 
K'apoleonic eagle. The hall was crowded with 
young men, corps-studenten being especially 
numerous, robust youths in caps and badges, 
and many of the faces were patched and scarred 
from duels in the Hirsch-Gasse. Von Treitschke, 
a dark, energetic figure, was received with great 
respect. Deafness, from which he suffered, 
affected somewhat his delivery. He told the 
"story of the great battle, the frantic effort 
against combined Europe of the crippled French, 
the defection of the Saxons in the midst of the 
fight, the final driving of Napoleon across the 
Elster, the death of Poniatowski and the retreat 



■206 TKe Last Leaf 

to France. His voice was a deep, sonorous 
monotone and every syllable was caught eagerly 
by bis auditors. They and the speaker were 
thoroughly at one in their intense German feel- 
ing. It was a celebration of triumph of the 
Fatherland. The significance of it all was not 
apparent, that sunny spring morning, but we 
were on the eve of a catastrophe which appar- 
ently no one foreboded; Metz, Gravelotte, and 
Sedan were only a few months away. The fire 
which I saw burning so hot in the souls of both 
speaker and hearers was part of the conflagra- 
tion destined to consume widely and thoroughly 
before the summer closed. 

Ernst Curtius was probably the most dis- 
tinguished Hellenist of his time. He had studied 
the Greeks on their own soil and gone with Ger- 
man thoroughness into their literature, history, 
and art. He had excellent powers of present- 
ment, wrote exhaustively and yet attractively 
and won early recognition. He was selected for 
the post of tutor to the Crown Prince, an honour 
of the highest. The Crown Prince, afterwards 
Emperor Frederick, held him in high regard 
and in 1870 his position in the world of scholars 
was of the best. I had the honour to pay him 
a visit in his home one pleasant Sunday after- 
noon in company with Bancroft. I remember 
Bancroft's crisp German enunciation as he pre- 
sented me; " Ich stelle Ihnen einen Amerikaner 
vor,-' and he mentioned my name. I bowed and 



£rnst Cvirtivis 207 

felt my hand grasped cordially in a warm, well- 
conditioned palm, while a round, genial face 
beamed good-naturedly. The interview was in 
the Professor's handsome garden, his accom- 
plished wife and daughters were of the party, 
and I remember Maiivem with pretzels on a 
lawn with rose-bushes close beside and music 
coming through the open windows of the house. 
The hospitality was graceful, there was no pro- 
found talk but only pleasant chatter. The 
daughters were glad to have a chance to try 
their English and I was glad for the moment 
to slip out of the foreign bond and disport my- 
self for their benefit in my vernacular, but the 
Professor needed no practice. His English was 
quite adequate, as, on the other hand, the Ger- 
man of Bancroft was well in hand. 

" What other university people would you like 
to see? " said Bancroft to me one day. I men- 
tioned von Ranke, Lepsius, and Mommsen as 
men whose names were familiar, whose faces I 
should like to look upon. 

" Find out the sprech-stunden of these men," 
said Bancroft to his secretary, and presently a 
slip was put into my hand containing the hours 
at which I could be conveniently received. Fol- 
lowing the direction, I was one day admitted to 
the library of von Ranke, a plain apartment 
walled by books from floor to ceiling, with a 
desk well-worn by days and nights of work. As 
I awaited his entrance the facts of his career 



208 The Last Leaf 

were vivid in my mind. He was a man of 
seventy-five and had been a scholar almost from 
his cradle. He was known to me particularly 
through his history of the popes, which was and 
perhaps is still the judicial authority with re- 
gard to the line of pontiffs, but that was only 
one book among many. He belonged to a class 
of which Germany has been prolific, whose con- 
sciences assault them if they let their pens lie 
idle, and who have no recourse in self-defence 
but building about themselves a barricade of 
books. After researches in various fields, von 
Ranke now was undertaking a history of the 
world, with no thought apparently of a probable 
touch from the dart of death in the near future; 
and he did indeed live until nearly ninety and 
long produced a volume a year. 

He entered presently from an inner room., 
rather a short, well-rounded figure with a face 
marked by a clear eye and much vivacity. He 
conversed well in English and was curious about 
American education and offered, rather ludi- 
crously, I remember, to exchange the publica- 
tions of the University of Berlin with those of 
the little fresh-water college in which I was at 
that time a young teacher. Could the scholar 
be aiming a sly sarcastic hit at the bareness of 
our educational outposts in the West? But no, 
his frank look and voice showed that he was 
unaware of the real conditions. The talk was 
not long, there was a hearty expression of regard 



TKeodor Mommsen 209 

for Mr. Bancroft who was fully accepted by the 
German-learned world as one of their Gelehrten, 
trained as he had been in youth in their schools, 
and in that day our best-known historian. I 
bowed myself out respectfully from the presence 
of the little man and sincerely hope that the 
merit of his great history is in no way abated 
because I took a half-hour of his time. 

I met Lepsius, the great Egyptian scholar, 
one afternoon in his garden, a hale, straight man 
of sixty with abundant grey hair surmounting 
a fine forehead, with blue eyes full of penetra- 
tion behind his spectacles. I had little know- 
ledge of the subject he had studied so profoundly 
and almost laughed outright when his pretty 
daughter asked me if I had read her father's 
translation of the Book of the Dead. Of von 
Ranke's themes I thought I knew something and 
was more at ease with him, as with Mommsen 
whom I met about the same time. 

Theodor Mommsen, more than any other, forty 
years ago, was the leading historian of Germany, 
lie began his career as a student of law, in 
the antiquities of which he became thoroughly 
versed. In particular Justinian and the Roman 
authorities, among whom he stands as chief, were 
the objects of ]Mommsen's research. From juris- 
prudence he passed to the study of general his- 
tory, and of the most interesting period of Rome 
he absorbed into his mind all the lore that has 
survived. This he digested and set forth in a 
14 



210 THe Last Leaf 

monumental work, which, translated into Eng- 
lish, has been, in the English-speaking world of 
scholars at least, as familiar as household words. 
At a still later time he was an active striver 
in the political agitations of his day. 

I sent in my card to Mommsen with some 
trepidation and was at once admitted. I found 
him sitting at leisure among his books and Ban- 
croft's introduction brought to pass for me a 
genial welcome. He was a man not large in 
frame with dark eyes, and black hair streaked 
with grey. No doubt but that like German 
scholars in general he could talk English, but 
he stuck to German and I was rather glad he 
did so; I could take him in better as he dis- 
coursed fluently in his mother-tongue. Momm- 
sen was a man of sharp corners who often in 
his political career brought grief to adversaries 
who tried to handle him without gloves. I was 
fortunate in catching him in a softer mood and 
witnessed an amiability with which he was not 
usually credited. His little daughters were in 
the room, pretty children with whom the father 
played with evident pride and joy, interrupting 
the conversation to caress the curly pates, and 
trotting them on his knee. He put keen ques- 
tions to me as regards America, showing that 
while busy with Csesar and the on-goings of the 
ancient forum he had been wide awake also to 
modern happenings. He expressed much regard 
for Bancroft and praised Grant for selecting as 



ScKenKel 21 1 

minister to Germany a personality so agreeable 
to European scholars. He told me of the jubilee 
of Bancroft which was about to be celebrated 
with marked honours. Fifty years before Ban- 
croft had " made his doctor " at Gottingen, one 
of the earliest Americans to achieve that distinc- 
tion, and the German universities meant to show 
emphatically their recognition of his merit. The 
celebration afterwards took place, not inter- 
rupted by the warlike uproar in which the land 
was about to be involved. A proud honour in- 
deed for the American minister. It was a note- 
worthy occasion to talk thus familiarly with one 
of the most illustrious scholars of the time, and 
I recall fondly the pleasant details of the picture. 
At Heidelberg the February before I had had 
an interview with Schenkel, then the leading 
theologian of that university. Him I found in 
his Studir-Zimmcr without fire ou a cold day. 
He seemed to scorn the use of the Kachelofen, 
the great porcelain stove, and was wrapped from 
head to foot in a heavy woollen robe which 
enveloped him and was prolonged about his head 
into a kind of cowl. He presented a figure 
closely like the portraits of some old reformers 
heavily mantled in a garb approaching the monk- 
ish Tracht which they had forsaken. It seemed 
out of character for Schenkel, for he was an 
avowed liberal and particularly far away from 
the old standards, but the sharp winter drove 
even a champion of heterodoxy into this outer 



212 The Last Leaf 

conformity with the old. In the case of the 
Berlin Gelelirten, however, the mediaeval dress 
was quite discarded. I chanced to see them in 
the spring with their windows wide open to the 
perfume of gardens and songs of nightingales, 
and in the case of Mommsen, my picture of his 
environment has traits of geniality, for he sat 
in light summer attire, his face aglow with 
fatherly impulses as he played in the soft air 
with his children. 

One of the most interesting men whom I met 
in Berlin was Hermann Grimm, then just rising 
among the characters of mark, but best known 
at that time as the son of the famous Wilhelm 
Grimm and the nephew of Jakob Grimm, — the 
" Brothers Grimm," whose names through their 
connection with the fairy tales are stamped in 
the memories not only of men and women, but 
of children throughout the civilised world. The 
" Brothers Grimm," it must be remembered, were 
scholars of the profoundest. The Teutonic folk- 
lore engaged them not simply or mainly as a 
source of amusement, but as a subject proper 
for deep investigation. They painfully gathered 
in out-of-the-way nooks from the lips of old 
grandames in chimney corners and wandering 
singers in obscure villages, the survivals of the 
primitive superstitions of the people. These 
they subjected to scientific study as illustrating 
the evolution of society, a deep persistent searcli 
with results elaborately systematised, of which 



THe Brothers Grimm 213 

the delightful tales so widely circulated are only 
a by-product. Aside from their service in the 
field of folk-lore they grappled with many an- 
other mighty task. The vast dictionary, in which 
German words are not only set down in their 
present meaning but followed throughout every 
stage of their etymology with their relations to 
their congeners in other tongues indefatigably 
traced out, is a marvel of erudition. Theirs also 
was the great Deutsche Grammatik, a philo- 
sophical setting forth of the German tongue in 
its connection with its far-spreading Aryan 
affinities. The " Brothers Grimm " were lovely 
and pleasant in their lives, and in their deaths 
they are not divided. Jakob was never married. 
Wilhelm was married, the child of the union 
being the distinguished man with whom it was 
my fortune to talk. 

They worked together affectionately until far 
into old age, and I have described their graves 
in the Mattliai Kirchhof where they lie side by 
side. 

I found Hermann Grimm in the study which 
had been the workshop through long years of 
his father and uncle. He was a handsome man 
in his vigorous years and had married the 
daughter of Bettine von Arnim, the Bettine of 
Goethe. It is not strictly right to class him as 
a historian. He was poet, play^^ight, critic, and 
novelist, perhaps mainly these, but soon after, 
in his' position as a professor in the university. 



214 The Last Leaf 

he was to produce his well-known Vorlesungen 
iiber Gothe, a work which though mainly critical, 
at the present time is a biography of conspicuous 
merit, which envisages the events of a famous 
epoch. I may, therefore, properly include him 
here, though the wide range of his activities 
makes it difficult to place him accurately. It 
paved the way for our interview that I knew 
Ralph Waldo Emerson, of whom he was, in 
Germany, the special admirer and student. 
He had just translated Emerson into German 
and sat at the feet of the Concord sage, in- 
fused by his inspiration. Hermann Grimm 
had never seen Emerson, and listened eagerly 
to such details as I could give him of his 
personality. He dwelt with enthusiasm upon 
passages in poems and essays by which he 
had been especially kindled, and hung upon my 
account of the voice and refined outward traits 
of the teacher whom he so reverenced. I after- 
wards procured a fine photograph of Hermann 
Grimm which I sent to Emerson. A kind letter 
from him, which I still treasure, let me know 
that I had put Emerson deeply in my debt; up 
to that time he had never seen a portrait of his 
German disciple, though the two men had been 
in affectionate correspondence. At a later time 
they met and cemented a friendship which was 
very dear to both. Hermann Grimm showed me 
with pride the relics of his father and uncle; 
the rows of well-thumbed volumes; the well- 



TKe DrotHers Grimm 215 

scored. Heften over which their hands had 
moved; their inkstands and pens; the rough 
arm-chairs and tables where they had sat. I 
think a trace from the smoke of their pipes and 
midnight lamp still adhered to the ceiling, and 
possibly cobwebs still hung in the corners of the 
bookcases which had been there from an ancient 
day. 

Quaint portraits of the " Brothers Grimm " 
at work in their caps and rough dressing-gowns 
were at hand, but Hermann Grimm had rather 
the appearance of a well-groomed man of the 
world. His coat was fashionable, his abundant 
hair and flowing beard were carefully trimmed. 
He was not a recluse, though faithful to his 
heredity and devoted mainly to scholarly re- 
search. He was at ease in the clubs and also 
at Court and enjoyed the give and take of a 
social hour with friends. 



CHAPTEE VIII 



POETS AND PROPHETS 



WHEN, in 1851, I arrived as a freshman 
in Cambridge, I encountered on my 
first visit to the post-office a figure standing 
on the steps, which at once drew my attention. It 
was that of a man in his best years, handsome, 
genial of countenance, and well-groomed. A silk 
hat surmounted his well-barbered head and visage, 
a dark frock-coat was buttoned about his form, 
his shoes were carefully polished and he twirled 
a little cane. To my surprise he bowed to me 
courteously as I glanced up. I was very humble, 
young westerner that I was in the scholastic 
town, and puzzled by the friendly nod. The 
man was no other than Longfellow, and in his 
politeness to me he was only following his in- 
variable custom of greeting in a friendly way 
every student he met. His niceness of attire 
rather amused the boys of those days who, how- 
ever, responded warmly to his friendliness and 
loved him much. This story was current. He 
had for some time been a famous man and was 
subjected to much persecution from sight-seers 

216 



Henry ^W. Long'fello'w 217 

which he bore good-naturedly. Standing one 
day at the Craigie House gate he was accosted 
by a lank backwoodsman : " Say, stranger, I have 
come from way back ; kin you tell me how I kin 
git to see the great North American poet? " 
Longfellow, entering into the humour of the 
situation, gave to the stranger his ready bow 
and responded : " Why, I am the great North 
American poet," at the same time inviting him 
into the garden with its pleasant outlook across 
the Charles toward the Brookline Hills. It 
Avould be quite unjust to think that there was 
any conceit in his remark, it was all a joke, but 
the thoughtless boys of those days took it up, 
commemorating it in a song, a parody of the 
air Trancadillo. 

" Professor Longfellow is an excellent man, 
He scratches off verses as fast as he can, 
With a hat on one whisker and an air that says 

go it, 
He says I 'm the great North American poet. 
Hey, fellow, bright fellow, Professor Longfellow, 
He's the man that wrote Evangeline, Professor 

Longfellow." 

This was my first introduction to college 
music and I often bore a quavering tenor as 
we shouted it out in our freshman enthusiasm. 
The ridicule, however, was only on the surface; 
we thoroughly liked and respected the genial poet 
and it was a great sorrow to us that he resigned 



2i8 The Last Leaf 

during our course, although his successor was 
no other than James Russell Lowell, whose star 
was then rising rapidly with the Biglow Papers. 
It was our misfortune that the succession was 
not close. We had two professors of modern 
literature, both famous men, but the usual 
calamity befell us which attaches to those who 
have two stools to sit upon. We fell to the 
ground. We had a little of Longfellow and a 
little of Lowell, the gap in the succession un- 
fortunately opening for us. I did, however, hear 
Longfellow lecture and it is a delightful memory. 
His voice was rich and resonant, bespeaking re- 
finement, and it was particularly in reading 
poetry that it told. I recall a discussion of 
German lyrics, the criticism interspersed with 
many readings from the poets noted, which was 
deeply impressive. At one time he quoted the 
"Shepherd's Song" from Faust, " Der Schafer 
piitzte sich zum Tanz." This he gave with ex- 
quisite modulation, dwelling upon the refrain 
at the end of each stanza, " Juchhe, Juchhe, 
Juchheise, heise, he, so ging der Fiedelbogen ! " 
This he recited with such effect that one im- 
agined he heard the touch of the bow upon the 
strings of the 'cello with the mellow, long-drawn 
cadence. He read to us, too, with great feeling, 
the simple lyric, Die loandelnde Glocke; upon me 
at least this made so deep an impression that 
soon after having the class poem to write, I 
based upon it my composition, devoting to it 



"THe Incvibation of Hia-watHa 219 

far too assiduously the best part of my last 
college term. T have always felt that I was 
near the incubation of Longfellow's best-known 
poem, perhaps his masterpiece, the all-pervading 
Hiawatha. The college chapel of those days was 
in University Hall and is now the Faculty Room, 
a beautiful little chamber which sufficed sixty 
years ago for the small company which then 
composed the student body. At either end above 
the floor-space was a gallery. One fronted the 
pulpit, curving widely and arranged witli pews 
for the accommodation of the professors and 
their families. Opposite this was the choir loft 
over the preacher's head, a smaller gallery con- 
taining the strident old-fashioned reed organ, 
and seats for the dozen or so who made up the 
college choir. Places in the choir were much 
sought after, for a student could stretch his legs 
and indulge in a comfortable yawn unmolested 
by the scrutiny of the proctors who kept a sharp 
watch on their brethren on the settees below. 
The professors brought their families, and the 
daughters were sometimes pretty. Behind the 
green curtains of the choir loft one could scan 
to his heart's content quite unobserved the 
beauties at their devotions. The college choir 
of my time contained sometimes boys who had 
interesting careers. The organist who, while he 
manipulated the keys, growled at the same time 
an abysmal bass, afterward became a zealous 
Catholic, dying in Rome as Chamberlain in the 



220 The Last Leaf 

Vatican of Pope Leo XIII. Horace Howard 
Furness was the principal stay of the treble, 
his clear, strong voice carrying far ; my function 
was to afford to him a rather uncertain support. 
My voice was not of the best nor was my ear 
quite sure. I ventured once to criticise a fellow- 
singer as being off the pitch; he retorted that 
I was tarred from the same stick and he proved 
it true, but there we sang together above the 
heads of venerable men who preached. They 
were good men, sometimes great scholars, but 
the ears they addressed were not always willing. 
A somewhat machine-like sermoniser who, it was 
irreverently declared, ran as if wound up but 
sometimes slipped a cog, had been known to 
pray " that the intemperate might become tem- 
perate, the intolerant tolerant, the industrious 
dustrious." Longfellow always came with his 
beautiful wife, the heroine of Hyperion, whose 
tragic fate a few years later shocked the world. 
He used to sit withdrawn into the corner of his 
high-backed pew, separated from us in the clioir 
loft by only a short intervening space, motionless, 
absorbed in some far-away tliought. Though his 
eyes were sometimes closed I knew that he was 
not asleep; what could be the topic on which 
his meditation was so intent? Not long after 
Hiawatha appeared, and I shall always believe 
that in those Sunday musings in the quiet 
little chapel while the service droned on he was 
far away 



XKe Lon^fello"w Centenary 221 

" In the land of the Dakotas, 
By the stream of Laughing Water." 

Some years after came the affliction which 
cast a deep shadow upon his happy successful 
life. His wife one evening in light summer 
dress was writing a letter, and, lighting a candle 
to seal it, dropped the match among her drap- 
eries. The flame spread at once and she ex- 
pired in agony; Longfellow was himself badly 
burned in his effort to extinguish the flames 
and always carried the scars. I did not see him 
in those years but have heard that his mood 
changed, he was no longer careful and debonair 
but often melancholy and dishevelled. Yet the 
sweetness of his spirit persisted to the end. The 
critics of late have been busy with Longfellow. 
His gift was inferior, they say, and his senti- 
ment shallow. Let them carp as they will, he 
holds, as few poets have done, the hearts of men 
and women; still more he holds the hearts of 
children, and the life of multitudes continues 
to be softened and beautified by the gentle power 
of what he has written. Two or three years 
since it was my good fortune to be present at 
the celebration in Sanders Theatre of the cen- 
tenary of Longfellow's birth. There was fine 
encomium from distinguished men, but to me the 
charming part of the occasion was the tribute 
of the school children who thronged upon the 
stage and sang with fresh, pure voices, the Village 



222 The Last Leaf 

Blacksmith, the simple lines set to as simple 
music, " Under the spreading chestnut-tree, the 
village smithy stands." In my time the old tree 
still cast its shade over the highway which had 
scarcely yet ceased to be a village street. The 
smithy, too, was at hand and the clink of hammer 
upon anvil often audible; the blacksmith, I sup- 
pose had gone to his account. During the chil- 
dren's performance a voice noticeably clear and 
fine sounded in the high upper gallery, a happy 
suggestion of the voice of the mother singing in 
paradise as the daughter sang below. Honour 
to the poet who, while so many singers of our 
time vex us with entanglements metaphysical 
and exasperating, had thought always for the 
simplest hearts and attuned his lyre for them I 
When I was in the Divinity School we organ- 
ised a boat club, a proceeding looked upon ask- 
ance by sedate doctors of divinity and church- 
goers who thought the young men would do 
better to stick to their Hebrew, but T. W. Hig- 
ginson exclaimed that now he had some hope 
for the school. It did take time. It was a long 
walk from Divinity Hall to the river nor was 
the exercise brief, I have found rarely more rap- 
turous pleasure than in the strenuous pulls I had 
on the Charles, and I witnessed the development 
of much sturdy manliness among those who, for- 
saking for a time their hermeneutics and homi- 
lies, gave themselves to the outdoor sport. Our 
club included a number of law-students and a 



President Elliot as an Oarsman 223 

young instructor or two; among the latter 
Charles W. Eliot, then with his foot on the first 
round of the ladder which he has climbed so 
high. Eliot pulled a capital stroke; my place 
was at the bow oar where a rather light weight 
was required who at the same time had head 
and strength enough to steer the boat among the 
perplexing currents. Our excursions were some- 
times long. Once we went down the Back Bay, 
thence around Charlestown up the Mystic to 
Medford, during which trip I steered the Orion 
without a single rub, going and coming under 
I think some forty draw-bridges. I have scarcely 
ever received a compliment in which I took more 
pride than when Eliot at the end, as we stood 
sweating and happy at the boathouse, told me 
that I had proved myself a good pilot. One 
evening, I remember, the sun had gone down and 
the surface of Back Bay perfectly placid at full 
tide glowed with rich tints ; the boats were shoot- 
ing numerously over the surface, cutting it 
sharply, the cut presently closing behind in a 
faint cicatrice that extended far. I thought of 
the beautiful simile in the Autocrat of the 
Breakfast Table, just then appearing in the 
Atlantic. Holmes had seen such things too, and 
said that they were like the wounds of the 
angels during the wars in heaven as described 
in Paradise Lost, gashes deep in the celestial 
bodies but closing instantly. In those years Dr. 
Holmes was himself an enthusiastic oarsman and 



224 The Last Leaf 

that night whom should we encounter alone in 
his little skiff but the Autocrat himself, out for 
his pleasure; he was plainly recognisable, though 
in most informal athletic dress, and as we sped 
past him a few rods away, Eliot from the stroke 
shouted a greeting over the water. " Why, 
Charlie," came ringing back the Autocrat's voice, 
" I did not know you were old enough to be 
out in a boat ! " Charlie was old enough, in fact 
our best oar, and took pleasure in demonstrating 
his maturity to the family friend who had seen 
him grow up. 

Dr. Holmes was one of the most versatile of 
men. We saw him here at home with the oar 
in the open. He was an excellent professor of 
anatomy, renowned for his insight and readiness 
in adapting means to ends in the difficult science 
where his main work lay. Literature was merely 
his hobby, and he was wit, critic, philosopher, 
historian, poet, good in all. Many a brilliant 
man has come to wreck through being too ver- 
satile. " 'Ne sutor ultra crepidam " is undoubt- 
edly a good motto for the ordinary man, but 
sticking to his last was something to which Dr. 
Holmes could never bring himself, and in a 
marvellous way his abounding genius proved 
masterful in a score of varying fields. But I 
have no purpose here to discuss or account for 
Dr. Holmes. He was a delightful phenomenon 
in the life of the nineteenth century, with whom 
I chanced to be somewhat in touch, and it is 



Dr. Holmes as a "Wit 225 

for me only to note a bit of the scintillation 
which I saw brilliantly diffused. He was fre- 
quently under my gaze, a low-statured, nimble 
figure, a vivacious, always cheerful face with a 
pronounced chin, seemingly ever on the brink of 
some outburst of merriment. I have heard him 
described as an " incarnate pun," but that hardly 
did him justice; punster he was, but he had a 
wit of a far higher kind and moods of grave 
dignity. His literary fame in those years was 
only incipient, his better work was just then 
beginning. The world appreciated him as a 
humourist of the lighter kind and capable, too, 
of spirited verse like Old Ironsides; it was not 
understood that he possessed profounder powers 
and could stir men to the depths. I have a 
vivid image of him at a banquet of the Harvard 
Alumni Association of which he was Second 
Vice-President, clothed in white summer garb, 
standing in a chair that his little figure might 
be in evidence in the crowd, merrily rattling off 
a string of amusing verses. 

" I thank you, Mr. President, 
You kindly broke the ice, 
Virtue should always go before, 
I 'm only second vice" 

These were the opening lines and the audience 
responded with roars to the inimitable fun- 
maker. In later years we learned to accord him 
a higher appreciation. The Autocrat and the 

IS 



226 The Last Leaf 

Professor at the BreaJcfast Tahle liave deep and 
acute thought as well as wit, and what one of 
our poets has produced a grander or more solemn 
lyric than the CJiamhered Nautilus? I dwell 
with emotion upon the funeral of Lowell, in itself 
a touching occasion, because it so happened that 
I saw on that day three great men for the last 
time, Justin Winsor, Phillips Brooks, and Dr. 
Holmes. I stood on the stairs at the rear of 
Appleton Chapel as the audience came down the 
aisle at the close. The coffin of Lowell rested 
for a moment on the grass under its wreaths. 
President Eliot and Holmes walked side by side; 
I have a distinct image of the countenance of 
Holmes as they came slowly out. It was no 
longer a young face but it had all the old viva- 
city and even at the moment was cheerful rather 
than serious; it had not, however, the cheerful- 
ness of a man who looks lightly on life, but that 
of one whose philosophy enables him to conquer 
sorrow and look beyond, the face of a man who 
might write a triumphant hymn even in an atmos- 
phere of death. These lines ran in my thought : 

" Build thee more stately mansions, oh my soul, 
As the swift seasons roll! 
Leave thy low vaulted past, 
Let each new temple, nobler than the last 
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, 

Till thou at length art free, 
Leaving thine out-grown shell 

By life's unresting sea ! " 



J. R. Lowell 227 

The fame of James Russell Lowell, too, in 
these years was incipient. As a writer he had 
shown himself to be elegantly schooled, but in 
the Fable for Critics and the Biglow Papers, he 
had burst forth as a most effective and slashing 
satirist. His culture was closely and perfectly 
fitted, but when scratched, revealing in full 
proportions the " Whang-doodle " Yankee. The 
whang, however, handling with all the deftness 
in the world the broadest and subtlest themes, 
and the doodle standing for a patriotism of the 
noblest. Those who came into close connection 
with him say that he grew morbidly fastidious, 
shrinking from coarse contacts and was happy 
at last only in a delicate environment. When 
in health, nevertheless, he was a Yankee of the 
truest, though sublimated by his genius and 
superb accomplishments. I know a little inn 
far away among the hills on whose porch half 
concealed by the honeysuckle, Lowell is said 
often to have sat listening to the dialect of the 
farmers who " vanned " and " vummed " as they 
disputed together in the evenings after the chores 
were done. Lowell had the dialect in his very 
bones, and loved it, but took pains to confirm his 
knowledge of it by studying on the sod. 

" An' yit I love the unhighschooled ways 
01' farmers hed when I was younger — 
Their talk wuz meatier and would stay, 

While book-froth seems to whet your hunger. 



328 The Last Leaf 

For puttin' in a downright lick 'twixt humbug's 

eyes, there's few can metch it. 
An' then it helves my thoughts as slick, ez stret 

grained hickory does a hetchet." 

On one occasion I heard Lowell tell a story 
in which he surrendered himself fully to the 
rustic heredity that was in him, flinging aside 
the accretions of culture. " It is strange," he 
said, " how even the moral sense of men may 
become warped. In a certain Cape Cod village, 
for instance, it had long been the custom to profit 
from tlie wrecks that happened upon the dan- 
gerous shore, until at last the setting of false 
lights and the appropriation of the lost cargoes 
became a legitimate business. One Sunday a 
congregation at church (they were rigid Puritans 
and punctilious about worship) was startled by 
the news that a West India ship loaded with 
sugar was going to pieces on the rocks near by. 
The birds of prey flocked to make prize of the 
booty. A good deacon bagged a large quantity 
of sugar, piling it on the shore while he went 
for his oxen to carry it home. The bad boys, 
however, resolved to play a trick on the deacon ; 
they emptied out the sugar and filled the bags 
with clean, brown sand, which counterfeited 
well. This the deacon laboriously carted to his 
barn, and only came to a sense of his loss when 
his Avife at night attempted to sweeten his tea 
from the bags. This brought out from the dea- 



Lowell's YanKee Story 229 

con the following remark : * I declare, when I felt 
that 'ar sand agrittin' between my teeth, I don't 
know but it was wicked, but I e'en a'most wished 
that there would n't never be another wreck! ' " 
Lowell told the story with all the humour pos- 
sible, rendering the deacon's remark with a 
twang and an emphatic dwelling on the double 
negative (a thing which Lowell believed we had 
suffered to drop out of polite speech unfortu- 
nately) with inimitable effect and most evident 
enjoyment. The substratum of the man was 
Yankee but probably no other of the stock has 
so enriched himself with the best of all lands 
and times. He had a most delicate sense of 
what was best worth while in all literatures and 
absorbed it to the full. One of the greatest mis- 
takes I ever made was in neglecting to become 
a member of his class in Dante when the oppor- 
tunity came to me. What an interpreter he was 
of the soul of the great Italian, and with what 
unerring instinct he penetrated to what was best 
in the sages and poets of the world everywhere! 
His own gifts as poet and thinker were of the 
finest, and they were set off with acquirements 
marvellous in their range and in the unerring 
precision with which they were selected. I re- 
call him at a very impressive moment. Many 
regard Lowell's Commemoration Ode, read at 
the Commemoration in 1865 of the Harvard 
soldiers who had taken part in the Civil War, 
as the high-water mark of American poetry. 



fl30 THe Last Leaf 

Whether or not that claim is just I shall not 
debate, but it is a great composition and per- 
haps Lowell's best. The occasion was indeed a 
noble one. A multitude had collected in the 
college-yard and through it wound the brilliant 
procession of soldiers who had taken part in 
the war, marching to the drum and wearing for 
the last time the uniform in which they had 
fought. From Major-Generals and Admirals 
down to the high privates, all were in blue, and 
the sun glittered resplendent on epaulet and 
lace worn often by men who walked with diffi- 
culty, halting from old wounds. The exercises 
in the church, the singing of Luther's hymn, A 
Mighty Fortress is our God, the oration and the 
impressive prayer of Phillips Brooks were fin- 
ished. The assembly collected under the great 
tent which filled the quadrangle formed by the 
street. Harvard and Hollis Halls and Holden 
Chapel. I sat at the corner by the side of 
Phillips Brooks. He was the Chaplain of the 
day and I had been honoured by a commission 
to speak for the rank and file. The speeches, 
though not always happy, preserved a good level 
of excellence. At length came Lowell. He 
stood with his back toward Hollis about midway 
of the space. He was then in his best years, 
brown-haired, dark-eyed, rather short-necked, 
with a full strong beard, his intellectual face, 
an Elizabethan face, surmounting a sturdy body. 
His manner was not impassioned, he read from 



TKe Commemoration Ode 231 

a manuscript with distinctness which could be 
heard everywhere, but I do not recall that his 
face kindled or his voice trembled. Even in the 
more elevated passages, I think we hardly felt 
as he proceeded that it was the culmination of 
the day's utterances and that we were really 
then and there in an epoch-making event. Un- 
fortunately for me my speech was yet to come 
and, unpractised as I was, I was uncomfortably 
nervous as to what I should say. I lost there- 
fore the full effect of the masterpiece. One or 
two of the speakers on the programme had 
dropped out and behold it was my turn. The 
announcement of my name with a brief introduc- 
tion from the chairman struck my ear, and it 
was for me to stand on my feet and do my best. 
My voice sounded out into the great space in 
which the echo of Lowell's was scarcely silent. 
I spoke for the rank and file and in my whole 
career of nearly eighty years it was perhaps the 
culminating moment, when fate placed me in 
a juxtaposition so memorable. 

In 1857 I sent a poem to the Atlantic then just 
beginning under his editorship. My poem came 
back with the comment, " Hardly good enough, 
but the writer certainly deserves encourage- 
ment." This frost, though not unkind, nipped 
my budding aspirations in that direction. I 
hung my modest harp on the willows and have 
almost never since twanged the strings. At a 
later time in England I came into pleasant rela- 



232 TKe Last Leaf 

tions with Lowell and saw his tender side. His 
term as Minister to England had come to a close. 
He had just lost his wife and was in deep afflic- 
tion, the sorrow telling upon his health, but he 
took kind thought for me and helped me zealously 
in my quest of materials for a considerable 
historical work. He enable me to approach 
august personages whom otherwise I could not 
have reached; in particular securing for me a 
great courtesy from the Duke of Cleveland, a 
descendant of Vane, who gave me carte hlanche 
to visit Eaby Castle in Durham, Vane's former 
home, a magnificent seat not usually open to 
visitors but which I saw thoroughly. I have al- 
ready mentioned the funeral of Lowell. It took 
place on a lovely day in the August of 1891. 
The procession passed from Appleton Chapel to 
Mount Auburn, and I, hurrying on reached the 
open grave before the line arrived. It was a 
spot of great beauty in a dell below the pleasant 
Indian Ridge on which just above lies the grave 
of Longfellow. At a few rods' distance is the 
sunny bank where later was laid to rest Oliver 
Wendell Holmes. Close at hand to the grave 
of Lowell lay his gifted wife, Maria White who 
wrote the lovely poem " The Alpine Shepherd," 
and the three brilliant and intrepid nephews 
who were slain in the Civil War. The old horn- 
beams, quaint and unusual trees, stand sentry 
on either hand. I saw the coffin lowered. 
Standing just behind Phillips Brooks, I heard 



Lo-well's F-uneral 233 

for the last time the voice of my boyhood friend 
reading with tenderness the burial service. One 
final experience remained for me on that day 
which I especially treasure. Leaving the ceme- 
tery I w^alked the short distance to the gate of 
Elmwood, the birthplace and always the home 
of Lowell. This spot he especially loved, he 
knew its trees, every one, and the birds and 
squirrels that came to visit them. I stood at 
the gate looking toward the old mansion aloof 
among the woods. I had often stood there and 
looked toward the house, but now it had a dif- 
ferent aspect; usually its doors and windows 
w-ere tightly closed, but now everything was wide 
open, the mourners had not returned to the 
house and at the moment no living being was 
visible. The windows and the portal looked out 
upon the late afternoon, in the dead silence; in 
the heightened feeling of the moment it seemed 
to me that the mansion had come to life, that 
it missed the fine spirit that had so lately flown 
forth from it, that with lids widely apart and 
distressful it looked forth into the great spacious 
heavens after a loved soul that had passed from 
it into the world beyond. It was only a dream 
of my excited fancy, but I shall always think 
of Elmwood as it was that afternoon. 

I am so fortunate as to have a close associa- 
tion with the town of Concord. My first Ameri- 
can ancestor, landing from his ship in 1635, went 
thither with the earliest settlers and established 



234 TKe Last Leaf 

himself on the level at tlie west of the town, 
at that time I suppose the outmost Anglo-Saxon 
frontier of the Western continent. Seven gen- 
erations of his descendants have lived in the town. 
I am in the eighth, and, though not native, and 
only transiently resident, I have a love for it 
and it is a town worth loving. It is fair by 
nature, pleasant hills rising among green levels 
and the placid river creeping toward the sea. It 
still maintains its vigorous town-meeting and 
holds well to the ancient traditions. The thir- 
teen colonies made on its soil their first forcible 
resistance to British aggression and there is no 
village in America so associated with great men 
of letters. When a boy of ten in 1844 I was 
swai)ped with a cousin, he going for a year to 
western ]Srew York, while I went for a year to 
the house of my aunt in Concord, the ancient 
homestead out of which eighty years before my 
great-grandfather had gone with gun in hand 
to take his part with the Minute Men. Emer- 
son had just become famous through Nature, 
Thoreau was then a young man quite unknown 
to fame. The Alcotts the year before had lived 
next door to my aunt, Louisa, a child of twelve, 
and her sisters the " Little Women " whom the 
world now knows so well. Close to the Battle 
Ground stood the two tall gate-posts behind which 
lay the " Old Manse " whose " Mosses " Haw- 
thorne was just then preserving for immortality. 
With all these I then, or a little later, came into 



THoreau in Young' ManKood 235 

touch and I can tell how the figures looked as 
scanned by the eyes of a boy. 

Thoreau in those days was known in the town 
as an irregular, eccentric spirit, rather hopeless 
for any practical purpose. He could make a 
good lead-pencil but having mastered the art he 
dropped it, preferring to lead a vagabond life, 
loitering on the river and in the woods, rather 
to the disquietude of the community, though he 
had a comfortable home cared for by his good 
mother and sister. He housed himself in a wig- 
wam at Walden Pond and was suspected of 
having started from the brands of his camp a 
forest fire which had spread far. This strange 
man, rumour said, had written a book no copy 
of which had ever been sold. It described a 
week on the Concord and Merrimac rivers. The 
edition fell dead from the press, and all the 
books, one thousand or more, he had collected 
in his mother's house, a queer library of these 
unsold books which he used to exhibit to visitors 
laughing grimly over his unfortunate venture in 
the field of letters. My aunt sent me one day 
to carry a message to Mrs. Thoreau and my rap 
on her door was answered by no other man than 
this odd son who, on the threshold received my 
message. He stood in the doorway with hair 
which looked as if it had been dressed with a 
pine-cone, inattentive grey eyes, hazy with far- 
away musings, an emphatic nose and disheveled 
attire that bore signs of tramps in woods and 



236 THe Last Leaf 

swamps. Thinking of the forest fire I fancied 
he smelled of smoke and peered curiously up 
the staircase behind him hoping I might get a 
glimpse of that queer library all of one book 
duplicated one thousand times. The story went 
that his artless mother used to say that Emerson, 
when he talked, imitated Henry, and I well recall 
a certain slow hesitation and peculiar upward 
intonation which made me think of Emerson at 
whose house I had often been. The Week on the 
Concord and Merrimac Rivers found its public 
at last and I suppose a copy of the first edition, 
authenticated as having belonged to tliat queer 
library, would easily bring to-day in the market 
its weight in gold. Whether or not Thoreau 
deserves great fame the critics sometimes dis- 
cuss. I heard a distinguished man say that he 
was greatly inferior to Gilbert White of Sel- 
bourne, and I myself feel that Lowell in some 
of his essays recording his study of the nature 
life at Elm wood equalled in fine insight, and sur- 
passed in expression the observer at Concord. 
Then in these later years we have had John 
Muir and John Burroughs who cannot be set 
low, but among American writers Thoreau was 
the pioneer of nature-study. Audubon had pre- 
ceded him but he worked mainly with the brush ; 
to multitudes Thoreau opened the gate to the 
secrets of our natural environment. The subtle 
delicacy of the grass-blade, the crystals of the 
snowflake, the icicle, the marvel of the weird 



Loviisa Alcott in GirlKood 237 

lines traced by the flocks of wild geese athwart 
the heavens as they migrated, these he watched 
and recorded with loving accuracy and sensitive 
poetic feeling as no one in our land before had 
done. I have thrown a stone upon the cairn at 
Walden Pond which has now grown so high 
through the tributes of his grateful admirers. I 
shall throw still others in grateful admiration 
if the opportunity comes to me. 

Many years ago I used to feel that Louisa 
Alcott and I were in a certain way bracketed 
together. Both were children of Concord in a 
sense, she by adoption and I through the fact 
that it had been the home of my forbears for 
seven generations. We were nearly of the same 
age and simultaneously made our first ventures 
into the w^orld of letters, taking the same theme, 
the Civil War. One phase of this she portrayed 
in her Hospital Sketches^ another, I in my Colour 
Guard. So we started in the race together but 
Louisa soon distanced me, emerging presently 
into matchless proficiency in her books for 
children. I sometimes saw her after she had 
become famous when she was attuning sweetly 
the hearts of multitudes of children with her 
fine humanity. She was a stately handsome 
woman with a most gracious and unobtrusive 
manner. She mingled with her neighbours, one 
of the quietest members of the circle. Said a 
kinswoman of mine who lived within a few 
doors : 



238 The Last Leaf 

It is so hard to think of Louisa as being a dis- 
tinguished personage; she sits down here with her 
knitting or brings over her bread to be baked in 
my oven as anybody might do, and chats about vil- 
lage matters, as interested over the engagements of 
the girls and sympathising with those in sorrow as 
if she had no broader interest. 



She was indeed one of those who bore her 
honours meekly. I recall her vividly when she 
was well past youth, in the enjoyment of the 
substantial gains success had brought. In her 
childhood she had known pinching poverty, for 
her philosophic father could never exchange his 
lucubrations for bread and clothes, philosophis- 
ing, however, none the less. But her success 
brought with it no flush, only an opportunity for 
her pleasant service. In these years my mood 
toward her had quite changed; at first I had 
thought of her as a competitor, perhaps as on 
my level. When I learned, however, that about 
that time she had been reading my Eistory of 
German Literature with approval, I felt that I 
was greatly honoured, that a mind of high dis- 
tinction had condescended to notice my pages. 
During the '80s when the "School of Philosophy" 
was holding its sessions in the rustic temple on 
the Lexington Road where her Orphic father was 
hierophant, it was rumoured that Louisa looked 
somewhat askance upon the sublimated discus- 
sions of the brotherhood that gathered. What 



Ha-wtHorne at tKe Old Manse 239 

was said was very wise, but far removed from 
what one finds in cliildren's books, but Louisa 
was sometimes present, a dignified hostess to the 
strangers who came, taking her modest part 
among the women in the entertainment of the 
guests but never in the conclave as a participant. 
Alas ! that she went so prematurely to her grave 
in " Sleepy Hollow " ! 

Hawthorne came into my consciousness when 
I was a boy of ten at school near the tall stone 
gate-posts immortalised by the great novelist as 
guarding the entrance to the Old Manse. The 
big gambrel-roofed building standing close to the 
Battle Ground as it stood on the 19th of April, 
1775, was unpainted and weather-stained, the 
structure showing dark among the trees as one 
looked from the road. All the world knows it 
as described outside and in by its famous tenant. 
It is a shrine which may well evoke breathless 
interest. The ancient wainscoting, the ample 
low-studded rooms, the quaint fireplace, and at 
the rear toward the west the windows with their 
small panes on some of which Hawthorne made 
inscriptions. " Every leaf and twig is outlined 
against the sky," or words to that effect, 
" scratched with my wife's diamond ring " ; here 
the sunset pours in gorgeously but there is more 
of shadow than sunlight about the Old Manse, 
and that is befitting for a dwelling with associa- 
tions somewhat sombre. In later years Haw- 
thorne occupied a house on the Lexington Road, 



240 TKe Last Leaf 

new and modern, writing there some famous 
books in an upper study said to be accessible 
only through a trap-door, but the Old Manse was 
the. appropriate home for him. It was there 
that his young genius produced its earlier fruit 
and it deserves to be particularly cherished. As 
a little child I went once with my father and 
mother to Brook Farm in West Koxbury, at the 
time when the community was most interesting. 
The famous disciples of Fourier were then, I 
suppose, for the most part present, Margaret 
Fuller, Hawthorne, George Ripley, George Wil- 
liam Curtis, Charles A. Dana and the rest, but 
I was too young to take note of them. I recall 
only George Ripley, the head of the enterprise, 
in a rough working-blouse who welcomed us at 
the gate. My father and he were old friends 
and as supper-time came and the community 
gathered singly and in groups in the dining-hall 
from the fields and groves outside, he said to 
my father : " Your seat at the table will be 
next to Hawthorne, but I shall not introduce 
you, Mr. Hawthorne prefers not to be introduced 
to people." It was a cropping out of the strange 
aloofness for which Hawthorne was marked. He 
could do his part in the day's work, be a man 
among men, dicker with the importers at the 
Salem Custom House and as Consul at Liver- 
pool, rub effectively with the traders, but his 
choice was always for solitude, he liked to go 
for days without speaking to a human being and 



THe Spectre of tKe Old Minister 241 

to live withdrawn from the contacts of the 
world, even from his neighbours and family. 
Probably it was because he was so thoroughly 
a recluse that I recall seeing Hawthorne only 
once, although he was in the village in whose 
streets I was constantly passing. Driving one 
day on the road near his home a companion ex- 
claimed, " There goes Mr. Hawthorne on the 
sidewalk ! " I put my head forward quickly to 
get a glimpse from the cover of the carriage of 
so famous a personage, and at the roadside was 
a fine, tall, athletic person with handsome fea- 
tures. My quick movement forward in the car- 
riage he took for a bow and he returned it 
raising his hat with gentlemanly courtesy, it was 
all through a mistake that I got this bow from 
Hawthorne but all the same I treasure it. A 
sister-in-law of his, who was often an inmate of 
his home, told me that Hawthorne really be- 
lieved in ghosts. It will be remembered that 
in the introduction to the Mosses from an Old 
Manse. Hawthorne speaks of the spectre of 
an ancient minister who haunted it, the rustling 
of his silken gown was sometimes heard in the 
hallways. My friend attributed this passage to 
something which happened during one of her 
visits. She sat one evening with her sister and 
Hawthorne in the low-studded living-room, and, 
as was often the case, in silence. She thought 
she heard in the entry the rustling of silk, it 
might have been a whistling of the wind or the 
16 



242 The Last Leaf 

swaying of a drapery, but it seemed to her like 
the sweeping along of a train of silk. At the 
moment she thought that Mrs. Hawthorne was 
passing through the entry, but rousing herself 
from her abstraction she saw her sister sitting 
quiet and remembered that she had been so sit- 
ting for a considerable interval. " Why, I dis- 
tinctly heard," said she, " the rustling of a silk 
gown in the entry ! " The sisters rose and went 
into the hallway for an explanation, but all was 
dark and still, no draperies were stirring, no 
wind whistled, and they returned to their chairs, 
talking for a moment over the mysterious sound, 
then relapsing into their former quiet. Haw- 
thorne meantime sat dreaming, apparently not 
noticing the light ripple in the quiet of the even- 
ing; but not long after — when my friend read 
the Mosses from an Old Manse, she found that 
the incident had made an impression upon him 
and that he interpreted the sound as a ghostly 
happening. She told me another story which 
she said she had directly from Hawthorne. Dur- 
ing a sojourn in Boston he often went to the 
reading-room of the Athenaeum and was parti- 
cularly interested to see a certain newspaper. 
This paper he often found in the hands of an 
old man and he was sometimes annoyed because 
the old man retained it so long. The old man 
lived in a suburb and for some reason was 
equally interested with himself in that paper. 
This went on for weeks until one day Haw- 



TKe -AtHentseuiTi GKost 243 

thorne, entering the room, found the paper as 
usual in the hands of this man. Hawthorne sat 
down and waited patiently as often before until 
the old man had finished. After a time the man 
rose, put on his hat and overcoat, and took his 
departure. As the door of the reading-room 
closed behind him Hawthorne took up the paper 
which lay in disorder as the man had left it, 
when, lo and behold, his eye fell in the first 
column on a notice of the old man's death. He 
was at the moment lying dead in his house in 
the suburbs and yet Hawthorne had beheld him 
but a moment before in his usual guise reading 
the paper in the Athenaeum! My friend said 
that Hawthorne told her the story quietly with- 
out attempt at explanation and she believed his 
thought was tliat he had actually seen a ghost. 
The readers of Hawthorne will recall passages 
which are consonant with the idea that Haw- 
thorne believed in ghosts. 

No other author has affected me quite so pro- 
foundly as did Hawthorne. The period of my 
development from childhood through youth to 
maturity was cocA^al with the time of his literary 
activities. The first vivid impression I received 
from books came from his stories for children, 
Grandfatlier's Chair, Famous Old People, and 
The Liberty Tree; when somewhat older I read 
The Rill from the Toion Pump and Little Annie's 
Ramhle, still later came the weird creations in 
which Hawthorne's expanding genius manifested 



244 XHe Last Leaf 

itself, such as The Minister's Black Veil, Rap- 
paccini's Daughter, and The Celestial Railroad. 
And not less in young manhood I was awed and 
absorbed in the great works of his maturity, 
The Scarlet Letter, the BUthedale Romance, The 
House of the Seven Gahles, and the Marble Faun. 
Meat and drink as they were to me in my youth 
and first entrance into life, I naturally feel that 
the author of these books was in mind pro- 
foundly powerful. In point of genius among 
our Americans I should set no man before him. 
He was not a moral inspirer nor a leader, he 
gave to no one directly any spiritual uplift, nor 
did he help one directly to strength in fighting 
the battles of life. He was a peerless artist por- 
traying marvellously the secret things of the 
human soul, his concrete pictures taken from 
the old Puritan society, from tlie New England 
of his day and from the passionate Italian life. 
He portrays but he draws no lesson any more 
than Shakespeare, his books are pictures of the 
souls of men, of the sweet and wholesome things 
and also the weakness, the sin and the morbid 
defect. These having been revealed the reader 
is left to his own inferences. It is fully made 
plain that he was a soft-hearted man, at any rate 
in his earlier time. The stories he wrote at the 
outset for children are often full of sweetness 
and sympathy. But as he went on with his 
work these qualities are less apparent, the spirit 
of the artist more and more prevailing, until he 



Emerson's Great-GrandfatKer 245 

paints with relentless realism even what is 
hideous, not approving or condemning; it is part 
of life and must be set down. Many have 
thought it strange that Hawthorne apparently 
had no patriotism. In our Civil War he stood 
quite indifferent, a marked contrast with the 
men among whom he lived and who like him 
have literary eminence. These passages stand 
in his diary and letters. " February 14, 1862, 
Frank Pierce came here to-night. . . . He is 
bigoted as to the Union and sees nothing but 
ruin without it. Whereas I should not much 
regret an ultimate separation." " At present 
we have no country. . . . New England is 
really quite as large a lump of earth as my 
heart can take in, I have no kindred with or 
leaning toward the abolitionists." But his cool- 
ness to his country's welfare was of a piece with 
the general coolness toward well and ill in the 
affairs of the world. Humanity* rolls before him 
as it did before Shakespeare, sometimes weak, 
sometimes heroic, depressed, exultant, suffering, 
happy. He did not concern himself to regulate 
its movement, to heighten its Joy, or mitigate 
its sorrow. His work was to portray it as it 
moved, and in that conception of his mission 
he established his masterfulness as an artist, 
though it abates somewhat, does it not? from his 
wholeness as a man. 

Some years ago in introducing Dr. Edward 
Waldo Emerson to an audience in St. Louis, I 



246 THe Last Leaf 

said that our great-grandfathers had stood to- 
gether with the Minute Men of Concord at the 
North Bridge on the 19th of April, 1775. His 
ancestor as their minister inspiring them with 
the idea of freedom, my ancestor as an officer, 
who by word and deed kept the farmers firm 
before the British volleys. The old-time con- 
nection between the two families persisted. 
Ralph Waldo Emerson and my father were con- 
temporaries coming through the Harvard gate 
into the small company of Unitarian ministers 
at about the same period and somewhat asso- 
ciated in their young manhood. Mrs. Emerson 
had been Lydia Jackson of Plymouth, baptised 
into the old Pilgrim Parish by the father of my 
mother. Lydia Jackson and my mother had been 
girls together, and good friends. It was natural, 
therefore, that, with these antecedents when I as 
a young boy arrived in Concord, I should come 
into touch with the Emersons. They were in- 
deed pleasant friends to me, both Mr. and Mrs. 
Emerson receiving with kindness the child whose 
parents they had known when children. The 
Emerson house on the Lexington Road is to-day 
a world-renowned shrine, sixty years ago it was 
the quiet home of a peaceful family, lovely as 
now through its natural beauty but not yet 
sought out by many pilgrims. The fame of 
Emerson, only recently established by his Nature 
and the earlier poems, was just beginning to 
spread into world-wide proportions. 



Emerson in Young ManHood 247 

I have before me liis image, in his vigorous 
years, the sloping rather narrow shoulders, the 
slender frame erect and sinewy but never robust, 
and a keen, firm face. In his glance was com- 
plete kindliness and also profound penetration. 
His nose was markedly expressive, sharp, and 
well to the fore. In his lips there was geniality 
as well as firmness. His smooth hair concealed 
a head and brow not large but well rounded. 
His face was always without beard. Though 
slight, he was vigorous and the erect figure 
striding at a rapid pace could be encountered 
any day in all weathers, not only on the streets 
but in the fields and woods. Unlike his neigh- 
bour Hawthorne his instincts were always social. 
He mingled affably with low and high and I 
have never heard a more hearty tribute to him 
than came from an Irish washwoman, his neigh- 
bour, who only knew him as he chatted with her 
over the fence tfbout the round of affairs that 
interested her. He always had a smile and a 
pleasant word for the school-children and at 
town-meeting bore his part among the farmers 
in discussing the affairs of the community. His 
voice in particular bespoke the man. It had a 
rich resonance and a subtle quality that gave 
to the most cursory listener an impression of 
culture. His speech was deliberate, sometimes 
hesitating, and his phrases often, even when he 
talked on simple themes, had especial point and 
appropriateness. 



248 The Last Leaf 

As a child I recall him among groups of chil- 
dren in his garden a little aloof but beaming 
with a happy smile. At a later time, when I was 
in college, we used sometimes to walk the twenty 
miles from Cambridge to Concord and the stu- 
dent group always found in him a hospitable 
entertainer. By that time he had reached the 
height of his fame. Those of us who sought 
him had been readers of Nature or the poems, 
of Representative Men, and of English Traits. 
For my own part while I did not always under- 
stand his thought, much of it was entering into 
my very fibre. In particular the essays on self- 
reliance and idealism were moulding my life. 
We approached him with some awe, " If he asks 
me where I live," said one of our number, a boy 
who was slain in the Civil War, " I shall tell 
him I can be found at No. So-and-so of such an 
alley, but if you mean to predicate concerning 
the spiritual entity, I dwell in the temple of the 
infinite and I breathe the breath of truth." But 
when Emerson met us at the gate, things were 
not at all on a high transcendental plane. There 
was a hearty " Good-morning," significant from 
him as he stood among the syringas, and there 
were sandwiches and strawberries in profusion, 
a plain bread-and-butter atmosphere very pleas- 
ant to us after a long and dusty tramp. On 
one occasion Emerson withdrew into the back- 
ground, we thought too much, while he gave the 
front place in the library, after he had superin- 



Alcott's Discourse on SKaKespeare 249 

tended royally the satisfaction of our bodily 
needs, to his neighbour Bronson Alcott. Mr. 
Alcott, white-haired and oracular, talked to us 
about Sliakespeare. There was probably a 
secondary sense in every line of Shakespeare 
which would become apparent to all such as at- 
tained the necessary fineness of soul. Perhaps 
we should find in this the gospel of a new Cove- 
nant in which Shakespeare would be the great 
teacher and leader. Mysteries were gathering 
about him, who was he? Who really wrote his 
plays and poems? The adumbrations of a new 
supernatural figure were looming in the concep- 
tion of tlie world. Mr. Alcott mused through 
the afternoon in characteristic fashion and Emer- 
son sat with us, silently absorbing the mystic 
speculation. 

But Mr. Emerson was not always silent. A 
good friend of his who was akin to me and over 
partial, invited him to her house with a little 
circle of neighbours and lo, I was to furnish 
tlie entertainment ! I had written a college poem 
and with some sinking of heart I learned that 
I was to read it to this company of which Emer- 
son was to be a member. I faced the music and 
for half an hour rolled off my stanzas. At the 
close, my kinswoman arranged that I should talk 
with Emerson in a corner by ourselves and for 
another half-hour he talked to me. I am bound 
to say that he said little about my poem, but 
devoted himself almost entirelv to an enthusiastic 



250 The Last Leaf 

outpouring over Walt Whitman's Leaves of 
Grass, an advance copy of which had just been 
sent him. A stronger commendation of a piece 
of literary work than he gave it would be hard 
to conceive. He had been moved by it to the 
depths and his forecast for its author was a 
fame of the brightest. It was then I first heard 
of Walt Whitman. Soon after the world heard 
much of him and it still hears much of him. 
Emerson did not confine the expression of his 
admiration of Walt Whitman to me, as the world 
knows ; he expressed it with an equal outspoken- 
ness to the poet, who curiously enough thought 
it proper to print it in gilt letters on the cover 
of his book, " I greet you at the beginning of 
a great career." To do that was certainly a 
violation of literary comity, but who shall give 
laws to rough-riding genius ! It is a penalty of 
eminence to be made sponsor unwittingly before 
the public for men and things when reticence 
would seem better. At any rate it brought 
Whitman well into notice and I have never 
heard, rough diamond though he undoubtedly was, 
that Walt Whitman's withers were wrung by 
this breach of confidence. 

There is a little nook by Gore Hall in Cam- 
bridge with which I have a queer medley of 
associations. One night I was tossed in a blanket 
there during my initiation into the Hasty Pud- 
ding Club. Precisely there I met Emerson rather 
memorably on the Commemoration Day in 1865 



Emerson's Poetic Gift 251 

when he said to me, glancing at my soldier's 
uniform, in very simple words but with an in- 
tonation that betrayed deep feeling, " This day 
belongs to you." Immediately after, hard by I 
shook hands with Meade, the towering stately 
victor of Gettysburg in the full uniform of a 
corps commander, in contrast indeed to the 
slight, plainly-dressed philosopher. And only 
the other day I helped my little granddaughter 
to feed the grey squirrels in the same green nook 
from which the rollicking boys, the sage, and 
the warrior have so long since vanished. 

I have heard it remarked by a man of much 
literary discrimination that Emerson's poetic 
gift was pre-eminent and that he should have 
made verse and not prose his principal medium 
for expression. As it is his poems are few, 
his habitual medium being prose. The critic 
attributed this to a distrust which Emerson felt 
of his power of dealing with poetic form, the 
harmonious arrangement of lines. He felt that 
Emerson was right in his judgment of himself, 
that there was a defect here, and that it was 
well for him to choose as he did. All this I 
hesitate to accept. As regards form, while the 
verse of Emerson certainly is sometimes rough, 
few things in poetry are more exquisite than 
many verses which all will recall. What stanzas 
ever flowed more sweetly than these written for 
the dedication of the Concord monument? " By 
the rude bridge that arched the flood," or the 



252 The Last Leaf 

little poem on the snow-storm, " Announced by 
all the trumpets of the sky arrives the snow." 
The Boston Hymn, too, though in parts informal 
to the point of carelessness, has passages of the 
finest music, 

" The rocky nook with hill-tops three, 
Looked eastward from the farms 
And twice each day the flowing sea 
Took Boston in its arms." 

Emerson when he gave his mind to it could 
sing as harmoniously as the best. Possibly we 
ought to regret that he did not write for the 
most part in verse. It is verse which comes and 
clings most closely to our souls and which 
memory holds most permanently. Prose is the 
inferior medium when a great utterance is ad- 
dressed to men, it is the singer pre-eminently 
who holds our hearts and lives forever. But 
Emerson chose to be what he was and we are 
thankful for him. Many were vexed with Mat- 
thew Arnold whom we thought depreciatory, but 
I find no fault with his summing up of Emerson, 
" as the friend of all those who seek to live in 
the spirit." His prose and poetry are a precious 
possession and we should be grateful for both, 
and for him. But my purpose here as always is 
not to criticise but only to touch the light outside 
things, pausing at the edge of profundities. 

I knew Emerson when I was a child and I 



Emerson in A.ge 253 

also knew him when I was well advanced in 
years at a time when, of course, he was close 
upon his end. His old age was pathetic. As 
often happens his memory failed while his other 
faculties were strong and the embarrassment of 
the thinker aroused sadness in those who came 
near him as the trusty servant fell short, though 
the mind in general was active. Emerson felt 
that I had put him under some obligation by 
giving him the first portrait he had ever seen 
of his faithful German disciple and translator 
Hermann Grimm. Perhaps that helped the wel- 
come with which I was received when I went 
to see him not far from the end. 

I had as a fellow-guest a man who had long 
been intimate with him and whom he was very 
glad to see; talking after tea in the library 
Emerson said, " I want to tell you about a friend 
in Germany, his name I cannot remember," and 
he moved to and fro uneasily, in his effort to 
recall it. " This friend with whom we have 
taken tea to-night, whose name also I cannot 
remember," here again came a distressed look 
at the failure of his faculty, " I cannot remember 
his name either, but he can tell you of this 
German friend whose name I have also for- 
gotten." It was a sorrow to see the breaking 
dovm of a great spirit and his agitation as he 
was conscious of his waning power. And yet so 
far as I could see, it was only the memory that 
was going; the intellectual strength was still 



254 XKe Last Leaf 

apparent and the amiability of liis spirit was 
perhaps even more manifest than in the years 
when he was in the full possession of himself. 
This came out in little things; he was over- 
anxious at the table lest the hospitality should 
come short, troubled about the supply of butter 
and apple-sauce, and soon after I saw him on 
his knees on the hearth taking care that the fire 
should catch the wood to abate the evening cool- 
ness that was gathering in the room. At the 
same time his mood was playful. Mrs. Emerson 
sat at hand, a woman in her old age of striking 
beauty, with her silver hair beneath a cap of 
lace, her violet eyes, and her white face. Miss 
Ellen Emerson, too, was present, shielding her 
father in his decline like a guardian angel. Mrs. 
Emerson spoke with pleasure of her old life at 
Plymouth. " Ah, Plymouth,-' broke in Emerson, 
" that town of towns. We shall never hear the 
last of Plymouth ! " And so he rallied his wife 
merrily over her patriotic love for her birth- 
place. The time was coming for him to go and 
he went serenely, the vital cord softly and grad- 
ually disengaged. In Sleepy Hollow lie near 
each other the four memorable graves, Haw- 
thorne's, Thoreau's, Louisa Alcott's, and Emer- 
son's. I know the spot well, on the ridge which 
slopes up from the lower ground, for there my 
own kin lie buried. Upon the same ridge rise 
the tall oracular pines and there is always a 
sweet murmur which the feeling heart under- 



PHillips DrooKs tHe Boy 255 

stands as a sub-conscious requiem breathed by 
the " Nature " of which these fine spirits were 
the interpreters. 

A day or two after entering college I made 
one of a group of freshmen, who, as the dusk 
fell, were working off their surplus energy by 
jumping over the posts along the curb-stone of 
a quiet street. One of our number had an un- 
fair advantage, his length of leg being so great 
that as he bestrode the post, he scarcely needed 
to take his feet from the ground, while for the 
rest of us a good hop was necessary fairly to 
clear the top. That is my earliest memory of 
Phillips Brooks. Big as he was, he was a year, 
perhaps two years, younger than most of us, and 
liad the boyishness proper to his immaturity. 
He had come from his long training in the Bos- 
ton Latin School, was reputed, like the rest of his 
class, to be able to repeat the Latin and Greek 
grammars from beginning to end, exceptions, 
examples, and all, and to have at his tongue's 
end other acquirements equally wonderful in the 
eyes of us boys who in our distant Western homes 
had had a smaller chance. He was an excellent 
scholar without needing to apply himself, and 
perhaps had more distinction in the student so- 
cieties than in the class-room. Socially he was 
good-natured and playful, never aggressive, too 
modest to be a leader, rather reticent. It was 
with surprise that I heard Brooks for the first 
time in a college society. The quiet fellow of a 



256 THe Last Leaf 

sudden poured out a torrent of words and, young 
though I was, I felt that they were not empty. 
There was plenty of thought and well-arranged 
knowledge. This pregnant fluencj' always char- 
acterised his public deliverances. Of late years 
it has been reported that he had at first a defect 
of speech, and to this the extraordinary momen- 
tum of his utterance was due. In the early- 
time I never heard of this. He did not stammer, 
nor was there other impediment; only this pre- 
ternaturally rapid outpouring on occasion, from 
a man usually quiet. When I heard him preach 
in later years the peculiarity remained. It was 
the Phillips Brooks of the Institute of 1770, 
matured, however, into noble spiritual power. 

Brooks had attained nearly or quite his full 
height on entering college, nor was he slender. 
His large frame was too loosely knit to admit 
of his becoming an athlete. He had no interest 
in outdoor sports. I do not recall that he was 
warmly diligent in study or general reading. 
His mind worked quickly and easily. Without 
effort he stood well in the class, absorbing what- 
ever other knowledge he touched without much 
searching. His countenance and head in boy- 
hood were noticeably fine, the forehead broad 
and full, the beardless face lighting up readily 
with an engaging smile, the eyes large and 
lustrous. It was evident that a good and able 
man must come out from the boy Phillips 
Brooks, but no one, not even President Walker, 



His HealtKy Hilarity • 257 

who was credited with an almost uncanny pene- 
tration in divining the future of his boys, would 
have predicted the career of Brooks. Though 
decorous and high-minded he was not marked as 
a religious man. If he were so, he kept it to 
himself. Though sometimes hilarious, he was 
never ungentle or inconsiderate, a wholesome, 
happy youth, having due thought for others and 
for his own walk and conversation, but without 
touch of formal piety. When I was initiated 
into the Hasty Pudding Club, I recognised in a 
tall fiend whose trouser legs were very apparent 
beneath the too scanty black drapery which en- 
veloped him, no other than Phillips Brooks. He 
was one of the most vociferous of the imps who 
tossed me in the blanket, and later, when the 
elaborate manuscript I had prepared w^as brought 
forth, was conspicuously energetic in daubing 
with hot mush from a huge wooden spoon the 
sheets I had composed with much painstaking. 
The grand event in the " Pudding " of our time 
was the performance of Fielding's extravaganza 
of Tom Thumb. I think it was the club's first 
attempt at an operatic performance, and it was 
prepared with great care. I suppose I am to- 
day the only survivor among those who took 
part, and it is a sombre pleasure to recall the 
old-time frolic. The great promoter of the un- 
dertaking was Theodore Lyman, able and force- 
ful afterward as soldier, scientist, and congress- 
man, who died prematurely; but the music and 



258 The Last Leaf 

details were arranged by Joseph C. Heywood, 
later a devout Catholic, ending his career in 
Rome as Chamberlain of Pope Leo XIII. In 
the cast Heywood was King Arthur and Lyman, 
general of the army. There were besides, a 
throng of warriors, lords, and ladies wonderful 
to behold. The costumes were elaborate. Old 
trunks and attics of our friends were ransacked 
for ancient finery and appointments that might 
be made to serve. Provision was made for thril- 
ling stage effects, chief among them a marvellous 
cow which at a critical moment swallowed Tom 
Thumb, and then with much eructation worked 
out painfully on the bass-viol, belched him forth 
as if discharged from a catapult. The music 
was an adaptation of popular airs, operatic and 
otherwise, to the words of Fielding, and was 
fairly good, rendered as it was by fresh young 
voices and an orchestra whose members played 
in the Pierian Sodality. The merriment of the 
lines was more robust than delicate, but with 
some pruning it passed. The bill of announce- 
ment, which was hung up in the Pudding room, 
and which possibly is still preserved, was very 
elaborately and handsomely designed, and I 
think was the work of Alexander Agassiz, who 
had much skill of that kind. The performers 
were all strenuous and some capable, but the 
hit of the evening was Phillips Brooks, who per- 
sonated the giantess Glumdalca to perfection. 
He was then nineteen, and had reached his full 



PHillips DrooKs in Comic Opera 259 

stature. He was attired in flowing skirts and 
befitting bodice, and wore a towering head-dress 
of feather dusters or something similar, which 
swept the ceiling as he strode. I had been cast 
originally for the Queen, but it was afterwards 
judged that I had special qualifications for the 
part of Princess. Like the youths in Comus, my 
unrazored lips in those days were as smooth as 
Hebe's, and I had a slenderness that was quite 
in keeping. Dressed in an old brocade gown, an 
heirloom from the century before, with a lofty 
white wig, and proper patches upon my pink 
cheeks, I essayed the role of une helle dame sans 
merci. Brooks and I were rivals for the affec- 
tion of Tom Thumb, and I do not recall which 
succeeded. The tragedy was most extreme. In 
the closing scene the entire cast underwent de- 
struction, strewing the stage with a picturesque 
heap of slain. We were not so very dead, for 
the victims near the foot-lights in order to give 
the curtain room to fall, drew up their legs or 
rolled out of the way, in a spirit of polite ac- 
commodation. The most impressive part of the 
spectacle was the defunct giantess, whose wide- 
spreading draperies and head-gear, as Brooks 
came down with a well-studied crash, took up 
so much of the floor that the rest of us had 
no room left to die in dignity. The piece was 
so much of a success that we performed it again 
at the house of Theodore Lyman, in Brookline, 
— and still again, at Chickering Hall in Boston. 



26o The Last Leaf 

Though Brooks could frolic upon occasion, his 
mood in his student days was prevailingly grave, 
and as he matured, warmed, and deepened into 
earnest religious conviction. My own close 
association with him came to an end at our 
graduation. Our respective fates led us in fields 
widely apart, and we met only at rare intervals. 
Ten years after graduation we came together in 
a way for me memorable. He was already held 
in the affectionate reverence of multitudes, and 
perhaps established in the position in which he so 
long stood as the most moving and venerated of 
American preachers. At the commemoration 
for the Harvard soldiers, in 1865, he was the 
chaplain, and his prayer shares with the Com- 
memoration Ode of Lowell the admiration of 
men as an utterance especially uplifting. My 
humble function on that day was to speak 
for the rank and file, and Brooks and I, as 
classmates, sat elbow to elbow at the table 
under the great tent. He was charmingly genial 
and brotherly. His old playfulness came out as 
he rallied me on the deterioration he noticed in 
my table manners, due no doubt to my life in 
camp, and rebuked me with mock sternness for 
appropriating his portion of our common chicken. 
With evident pleasure, he drew out of his pocket 
the Nation, then just beginning, and showed me 
a kind notice of my Thinking Bayonet, written 
by Charles Eliot Norton. But behind the smile 
and the joke lay a new dignity and earnestness, 



His Broadness of Spirit 261 

a quality he had taken on since the days of our 
old comradeship. So it always was as we met 
transiently while the decades passed until the 
threshold of old age lay across the path for both 
of us. Now and then I had from him an affec- 
tionate letter. One of these I found profoundly 
touching. Theodore Lyman lay prostrate with 
a lingering and painful illness from which he 
never rose. Brooks wrote that he had carried 
to him my Life of Young Sir Henry Yane, and 
read from it to our dying friend. My story had 
interest for them, and I felt that whatever might 
befall my book I had not worked in vain if two 
such men found it worthy. 

Phillips Brooks early had recognition as the 
most important religious influence of his time, 
and his spirit was not less broad-minded than 
it was fervent. In the multitudes that felt the 
power of his impassioned address were included 
men and women of the most various views, and 
he quickened the life of the spirit in all house- 
holds of faith. His sympathies were most 
catholic, and this anecdote clearly illuminates 
his broad-mindedness. I had dropped into a 
Boston bookstore on a quiet morning; Brooks 
presently came in to browse over the new issues 
on the counters. There was no one to disturb 
us, as we enjoyed this our last conversation to- 
gether. He spoke of Channing. " Do you know," 
said he, " when Dean Stanley came over here I 
went to East Boston to see him on his ship. He 



262 THe Last Leaf 

said to me almost at once, * Where is Mount 
Auburn?' AVhy, said I, how strange that the 
first thing you inquire about as you arrive is a 
cemetery ! ' But is not Channing buried there? ' 
said he. I told him I did not know. ^Well, 
he is and I want to go at once to the grave of 
Channing ! ' So as soon as we could," con- 
tinued Phillips Brooks, " we took a carriage and 
drove to Mount Auburn to visit the grave of 
Channing." He sympathised fully with the ad- 
miration felt by his friend, the great English 
churchman, for Channing, and gladly did him 
homage, and his talk flowed on in channels that 
showed his heart was warm toward men of all 
creeds who were inspired by the higher life. 
This noble candour of mind was a marked ele- 
ment of his power, and has endeared his memory 
among scorces of sects that too often clash. 
How sweetly unifying in the midst of a jarring 
Christendom has been the spirit of Phillips 
Brooks ! 

After this I saw him only once. It was at 
the funeral of James Russell Lowell. In Apple- 
ton Chapel he stood in his robes, gentle and 
powerful, as he read the burial service. When 
the body was committed to the grave I stood 
just behind him and heard his voice in the last 
hallowed sentences, " Dust to dust, ashes to 
ashes, and the spirit to the God who gave it." 
I never heard that voice again. 



CHAPTER IX 

MEN OF SCIENCE 

IN England, in the fall of 1870, I missed an 
opportunity to see the great scientific men 
of the time. Faraday was still active, and in 
the full ripeness of his fame. Huxley, Tyndall, 
Darwin, Sir Joseph Hooker, Joule, Lyell, Mur- 
chison were in the midst of their best work, and 
probably all or most of them were present at 
the meeting of the British Association, which 
took place that year somewhere in the west of 
England. Miss Frances Power Cobbe, with 
whom I had for some time maintained a corre- 
spondence, growing out of the interest I felt in 
her Intuitive Morals, and other writings, invited 
me to accompany her to the meeting, at which, 
introduced by her, I might have had interesting 
interviews. I let the chance go by, and feel to- 
day that my memory stands impoverished in that 
it holds no first-hand knowledge of the lights, 
who in their century were the glory of their 
country and the world. 

In Germany I was more fortunate. Arriving 
at Heidelberg at a time before its high prestige 

263 



264 THe Last Leaf 

had suffered, much diminution, I found in all 
the four Faculties men of great distinction. One 
hears that in the stern centralising to which 
since 1870 Germany has been subjected the outer 
universities have suffered, their strength, their 
able teachers, namely, being drawn away for a 
brilliant concentration at Berlin. In the little 
university town of those days students and pro- 
fessors rubbed closely and great men were some- 
times found in odd environments. Expressing 
once a desire to see a certain venerable theo- 
logian of wide fame, I was told he was sure to 
be found on such and such evenings in a well- 
known hier locale^ and there I had opportunity 
to observe him, an aged and withered figure, with 
a proper stein of the amber fluid frothing at his 
side, and a halo from an active pipe enwreathing 
his grey hair, as he joked and gossiped familiarly 
with his fellow-loiterers about the heavy oak 
table. At another time I was among surround- 
ings less rough, the guest-room of a club of the 
finer world, curtained and carpeted, and made 
attractive with pictures, fiowers, and music. A 
company of ladies and gentlemen sat sipping 
Mai-wein and Mark grdfler, while a conjurer en- 
tertained them with his tricks. During one of 
these, desiring a confederate from the lookers-on, 
he approached a slender and refined-looking man, 
who was following the necromancer's proceed- 
ings with as much interest as anybody. The 
wizard's air of deference, and the respectful looks 



Kirchoff tKe PKysicist 265 

of the company led me to infer that he was a 
man above the common, but he took part affably 
in what was going on, helped out the trick, and 
laughed and wondered with the rest when it 
succeeded. I presently learned to my surprise 
and amusement that the amiable confederate of 
the conjurer was no other than the physicist 
Kirchoff, then in fresh and brilliant fame as the 
inventor of the spectroscope and the initiator 
of the scientific method known as spectrolysis. 
The fact has long been known that a prism 
properly contrived will decompose a ray of white 
light into the seven primary colours, but the 
broad and narrow bands running across the 
variegated scheme of the spectrum had either 
escaped notice or been neglected as phenomena 
not significant. Now came, however, my genial 
fellow-guest of the Heidelberg Club, detecting 
that the lines of the spectrum were one thing 
or another according to the substance emitting 
the light, and forthwith the world became aware 
of a discovery of vast moment. The light of the 
sun, and of the stars more distant than the sun, 
could be analysed or spectrolised, and a certain 
knowledge was shed of what was burning there 
in the immensely distant spaces. We can know 
what constitutes a star as unerringly as we 
know the constituents of the earth. Still more, 
among the supposed elements to which pains- 
taking chemists had reduced composite matter, 
many were found by the all-discerning prism to 



266 XHe Last Leaf 

be not ultimate, but themselves susceptible of 
subtler division. In fact here was a method of 
chemical and physical analysis, much more 
powerful, and also more delicate, than had be- 
fore been known, and the idea of the scientists 
as to the make-up of the material universe deep- 
ened and widened wondrously. I sat often 
among the crowd of students in Kirchoff's lec- 
ture-room, watching the play of his delicate 
features as he unravelled mysteries which till 
he showed the way were a mere hopeless knot. 
Near him as he spoke, on a table were the wand, 
the rings, the vials, above all a spectroscope with 
its prisms, the apparatus with which the ma- 
gician solved the universe. Once, as I stood 
near him, he indicated in a polite sentence, with 
a gesture toward the table, that I was free to 
use these appliances. In the depth of my un- 
knowledge I felt I could not claim to be even 
a tyro, and was duly abashed beneath the pene- 
trating eye. But it is interesting to think that 
for a moment once I held the attention of so 
potent a Prospero. 

In those days the name of Kirchoff was 
coupled always with that of an associate, the 
chemist Bunsen, when there was mention of 
spectrum-analysis; and in my time at Heidel- 
berg, Bunsen was at hand and I became as 
familiar with his figure as with Kirchoff. In 
frame Bunsen was of the burly burgomaster type 
not rare among the Teutons, and as I saw him 



Bxinsen tHe CKemist 267 

in his laboratory to which I sometimes gained 
access through students of his, he moved about 
in some kind of informal schlafrock or working 
dress of ample dimensions, with his large head 
crowned by a peculiar cap. On the tables within 
the spaces flickered numerously the " Bunsen 
burners," his invention, and it was easy to fancy 
as one saw him, surroi^nded by the large com- 
pany of reverent disciples, that you were in the 
presence of the hierophant of some abstruse and 
mysterious cult, in whose honour waved the 
many lambent flames. I think he was unmar- 
ried, without domestic ties, and lived almost 
night and day among his crucibles and retorts, 
devoted to his science and pupils toward whom 
he showed a regard almost fatherly. In his lec- 
ture-room, in more formal dress he was less pic- 
turesque, but still a man to arouse deep interest. 
He was in the front rank of the chemists of all 
time, and I suppose had equal merit with Kir- 
choff in the momentous discovery in which their 
names are linked. 

There was, however, at this time in Heidel- 
berg a scientist probably of greater prestige than 
even these, whose contemporary influence was 
more dominant, and whose repute is now, and 
likely to be hereafter more prevailing. In my 
walks in a certain quiet street, I sometimes met 
a man who made an unusual impression of dig- 
nity and power. He had the bearing of a leader 
of men in whatever sphere he might move, mas- 



268 THe Last Leaf 

sive and well-statured, his dress not obtrusive 
but carefully appointed, with an eye and face 
to command. His manner was courteous, not 
domineering, and I wondered who the able, high- 
bred gentleman might be, for he carried all that 
in his air as he passed along the street. It was 
the illustrious Helmholtz, then in his best years, 
with great achievements behind him and before. 
His researches in many fields were profound and 
far extending. I suppose his genius was at its 
best when dealing with the pervasive imponder- 
able ether that extends out from the earth into 
the vast planetary spaces in whose vibrations 
are conditioned the phenomena of light. No 
subject of investigation can be more elusive. 
The mind that could grapple with this and arrive 
at the secrets and laws of the subtle medium 
through which the human eye receives impres- 
sion is indeed worthy of our veneration. Prob- 
ably, excepting Humboldt, no German scientist 
in these later centuries has reached such emi- 
nence. The fields of the two men were widely 
different. The one we know best as the scientific 
traveller, roaming the earth over, and reducing 
to ordered knowledge what can be perceived of 
its fauna and flora, of the strata that underlie 
it, the oceans that toss upon it, the atmosphere 
that surrounds it. The other roved not widely, 
but keeping to his lenses and calculations, pene- 
trated perhaps more profoundly. Helmholtz, a 
well-born youth, began his career as a surgeon 



HelxnKolt^z 269 

in the Prussian army, and his service there, no 
doubt, contributed to the manly carriage for 
which he was conspicuous. He married a lady 
of a noble house of Wuertemberg, and moved in 
an environment conducive to courtly manners. 
Heidelberg, like the German universities in gen- 
eral, well understood that ability in its teachers, 
and not a pompous architectural display, makes 
a great institution. Its buildings were scattered 
and unpretending. Helmholtz had a lecture- 
room and laboratory apart, in a structure 
modern and graceful, but modest in its appeal. 
Here he discoursed to reverent throngs in tones 
never loud or confident. It is for wiseacres and 
charlatans to declaim and domineer. The mas- 
ters are deferential in the presence of the sub- 
limities and of the intelligences they are striving 
to enlighten. 

In Germany I saw the great lights of science 
from afar, coming into relations of intimacy only 
with one or two privat-docents, young men strug- 
gling precariously for a foothold. One such 
striver I came to know well, a young man gifted 
but physically crippled, who, being anxious to 
get up his English, as I was to get up my Ger- 
man, entered with me into an arrangement to 
converse in these alternately. We were about on 
a par in our knowledge or ignorance of the speech 
not native to us, and helped each other merrily 
out of the pitfalls into which we stumbled, ac- 
cording as English or German ruled the time. 



270 The Last Leaf 

I was aghast to find that I had been telling 
my new German acquaintances that while a 
married man, I had deserted and cast ojf my 
wife and little boy in America, when I meant 
to say only that I had left them behind during 
my temporar}^ sojourn. A treacherous insepa- 
rable prefix had imparted to my " leaving them " 
an unlooked-for emphasis. The laugh for the 
moment was on me, but only for the moment. 
A little later Knopff was telling me of the old 
manuscripts in the library illuminated gorge- 
ously by " de pious and skilful monkeys of de 
Middle Ages." He was a bright fellow, and I 
have hoped I might encounter his name in some 
honourable connection. If he survived it was 
as one of the unbekannt, an afiix very dreadful 
to young aspirants for university honours. 

As regards the men who, during the past 
seventy-five years have so greatly widened our 
scientific knowledge, I have had contact with 
those of Germany only for brief periods, and in 
the outer circle. As to their American brethren, 
fate has been more kind to me. I have sat as 
a pupil at the feet of the most eminent, and 
with some I have stood in the bond of friendship. 

Divinity Hall, at Harvard University, has 
always had a pleasant seclusion. Near the end 
of its long, well-shaded avenue, it had in the 
rear the fine trees of Norton's Woods, and fifty 
years ago pleasant fields stretching before. Of 
late the Ampelopsis has taken it into its especial 



Divinity Hall Sixty "Years A.^o 271 

cherishing, draping it with a close green luxuri- 
ance that can scarcely be matched elsewhere. 
Moreover it is dominated by the lordly pile of 
the Museum of Comparative Zoology. " Whence 
and what art thou, execrable shape ! " a theologue 
once exclaimed as the walls were rising, feeling 
that there must always be a battle between what 
the old Hall stood for and the new building was 
to foster. But the structures have gone on in 
harmony, and many a devotee of science has had 
hospitable welcome in the quarters intended for 
the recruits of what so many suppose to be the 
opposing camp. There was a notable case of 
this kind in my own time. 

One pleasant afternoon a group of " divini- 
ties '' (Ye gods, that that should have been our 
title in the nomenclature of the University!) 
were chatting under one of the western porches. 
Talk turned upon an instructor, whose hand 
upon our essays was felt to be soft rather than 
critical, and who was, therefore, set low. " By 
Holy Scripture," broke out one, " a soft hand 
is a good thing. A soft hand, sir, turneth away 
wrath." The window close by opened into the 
room of Simon Newcomb, a youth who had no 
part in our studies, but of whom we made a 
chum. In those days he could laugh at such a 
joke as it blew in at his window with the 
thistle-down, — indeed was capable of such things 
himself. 

It is a bit odd that as I come to write of him, 



272 The Last Leaf 

this small witticism of half a century back should 
thrust itself obstinately into my memory, but 
after all it may not be out of place. The im- 
pression of the greatness of a mountain we get 
powerfully if the eye can measure it from the 
waif of seaweed at low tide up to the snow-cap 
of the summit. At this and similar jokes the 
boy Simon Newcomb connived, as he moved in 
our crowd. They were the waifs at low tide 
from which his towering mind rose to the meas- 
uring of the courses of the stars. He came 
among us as a student of the Lawrence scientific 
school, muscular and heavy-shouldered from 
work on shore and at the oar in Nova Scotia. 
Though not slovenly, he was the reverse of trim. 
His rather outlandish clothes, pressed once for 
all when they left the shop of the provincial 
tailor, held his sturdy elbows and knees in bags 
moulded accurately to the capacious joints. His 
hair hung rebelliously, and his nascent beard 
showed an untrained hand at the razor. But 
his brow was broad, his eye clear and intelli- 
gent, and he was a man to be reckoned with. 
He was barely of age, but already a computer 
in the Nautical Almanac office, then located at 
Cambridge, and we well knew work of that sort 
required brains of the best. Since Simon New- 
comb's death an interesting story has been told 
about his heredity. His strong-brained father, 
measuring his own qualities with rigid introspec- 
tion, discovering where he was weak and where 



Simon Ne^wcomb's Parentage 273 

capable, resolved that whatever wife he chose 
should supplement in her personality the points 
as to which he lacked. He would father sons 
and daughters who should come into the world 
well appointed; in particular he looked toward 
offspring who should possess high scientific gifts. 
With this mind he set out on his courting, 
and steering clear of vain entanglements with 
rather preternatural coolness, at last in a remote 
village, satisfied himself that he had found his 
complement. He permitted his docile heart to 
fall in love, and in due course there was born 
into the world a great man. The wooing has 
a humorous aspect, — this steering of unruly 
Hymen! The calculated result, however, did 
not fail of appearance, and perhaps the world 
might profit from such an example. I was 
strongly drawn toward Simon Newcomb by his 
unlikeness to myself. I was town-bred and he 
full of strength gained in the fields and along 
the beach. My own disinclination for mathematics 
was marked, but I had a vast admiration for 
a man to whom its processes were easy. We 
became very good friends. He was a genial fel- 
low, capable as I have said of taking or making 
a joke, yet his moods were prevailingly serious, 
and he had already hitched his waggon to a 
star. Abnormally purposeful perhaps, a crop- 
ping out no doubt of heredity, he had set a high 
mark for himself and was already striving to- 
ward it. In an autobiographical fragment he 
18 



274'' The Last Leaf 

says, referring to his early surrender of his 
powers to high mathematical work : 

To this work I was especially attracted, because its 
preparation seemed to me to embody the highest 
intellectual power to which man has ever attained. 
The matter used to present itself to my mind some- 
what in this way. . . . There are tens of thousands 
of men who could be successful in all the ordinary 
walks of life. Thousands who could gain wealth, 
hundreds who could wield empires, for one who 
could take up the astronomical problems with any 
hope of success. The men who have done it are 
therefore in intellect the select few of the human 
race, an aristocracy ranking above all others in the 
scale of being. The astronomical ephemeris is the 
last practical outcome of their productive genius. 

In pursuing their lives men no doubt follow 
the line of least resistance, and Simon Xewcomb 
here we may be sure was no exception; thus he 
chose to deal in his work with the heaviest and 
most perplexing problems with which the human 
intellect can engage. I do not attempt to de- 
scribe or estimate what he achieved. Only a 
few select minds in his generation were capable 
of that. At his death the tributes of those who 
had a right to speak were unmeasured. Perhaps 
no human mind ever attacked more boldly the 
uttermost diflSculties, and indeed have been more 
successful in the wrestle. He was set by the 
side of Hipparchus, of Galileo, Copernicus, 



Ne-wcomb's Last Year 275 

Kepler, and Sir Isaac Newton. In a class thus 
lofty, his scientific fellows have judged that he 
had a title to stand. In their high strivings he 
was equally zealous, and his achievement was 
comparable with theirs. Nevertheless, had his 
disposition inclined him, there were many other 
paths into which he might have struck with suc- 
cess. His versatility was marked and he did 
try his hand at various tasks, at finance, po- 
litical economy, belles-lettres. James Bryce, 
who knew him well, is said to have seen in him 
the stuff for a great man-of-affairs, a leader of 
armies or a captain of industry. His excur- 
sions, however, into such fields, though some- 
times noteworthy in result, were transient and 
more or less half-hearted. His allegiance, given 
so early to the sublimest of pursuits, held him 
to the end. The Government of the United 
States placed him in its highest scientific posi- 
tion, at the head of the Naval Observatory, and 
his serious work from first to last was in the 
solemn labyrinths where the stars cross and re- 
cross, and here lie was one of the most master- 
ful of master-minds. 

It was full fifty years since Simon Newcomb 
and I were boys together in Divinity Hall. No 
letter or message had ever passed between us. I 
had followed the course of his fame, and felt 
happy that I had once known him. Returning to 
my lodgings, during a sojourn in Washington, I 
was told I had had a visitor, a man well on in 



276 TKe Last Leaf 

years, plain in attire, and rugged-faced. The card 
he left bore the name " Simon Newcomb." I 
sought him out at once, and have rarely felt more 
honoured than that my old friend, learning 
casually of my whereabouts, had felt the impulse 
to find me and renew our former intercourse. 
After a half-century the boy was still discern- 
ible in the aging man. The big brow remained 
and the keen and thoughtful eye. His dress and 
manner were simple, as of old. He was entitled 
to wear the insignia of a rear-admiral, and had 
long lived in refined surroundings which might 
have made him fastidious. In look and bearing, 
however, he was the hearty, friendly man of the 
Nova Scotia coast, careless of frills and fine 
manners. 

It was a red-letter day for me when Simon 
Newcomb met me at the door of the Cosmos 
Club, of which he was then president, and pre- 
sented me as his guest to one and another of the 
select company of men who formed its member- 
ship. He moved among them as unostentatious 
and simple-mannered as he had been as a boy, 
with a catholic interest in all the varying topics 
which held the sympathies of the crowd, and 
able well to hold his own whatever might be 
the field of the conversation. Bishop, poet, 
scientist, historian, he had common ground with 
them all. I sat with him in his study, among 
heaped-up papers inscribed with the most ab- 
struse and intricate calculations. It did not 



A.sa Gray 277 

affect the warmtli of his welcome that I had no 
partnership with him in these dif&ciilt pursuits. 
He was broad enough to take cognizance, too, 
of the things I cared for. It was hard to feel 
that the man there hitting off aptly a prominent 
personality or historic event mooted in our little 
human world was at the same time in the 
planetary confidences, and that when you shook 
his hand at parting, he would turn to interpreting 
the sweet influences of the Pleiades and the mys- 
teries of the bands that hold Orion. Coming 
home from an interview with Simon Newcomb, 
late at night I paused on the terrace at the west 
front of the Capitol and looked back upon the 
heavens widely stretching above the city. The 
stars glittered cold, far, and silent, but I had 
been with a man who in a sense walked and 
talked with them and found them sympathetic. 
In the power of pure intellect I felt I had never 
known a greater man. 

On an autumn day in the early fifties, as I 
loitered in the green-house of the Botanic Garden 
at Cambridge, a lithe bare-headed man, in rough 
brown attire, came quickly stepping in from the 
flower-beds outside. He was in his fullest vigour, 
his hair more inclined to stand erect than to 
lie smooth, his dark eyes full of animation. It 
was a noticeably vivid and alert personality, and 
as he tossed on to a working-table a heavy sheaf 
of long-stemmed plants, wet from a recent shower 
and bent over them in sharp scrutiny, I knew 



378 The Last Leaf 

I was in the presence of Asa Gray, the first of 
American botanists. He had come as a boy 
from a remote rural district, and with few ad- 
vantages, following the bent of a marked scien- 
tific genius, he had won for himself before 
reaching middle life a leading place. I was 
soon to know him better, for it was my fortunate 
lot to be one in the crowd of juniors which for 
a term lined up before him once a week or so 
in Holden Chapel. The small peculiarities of 
great men have an interest, and the function I 
am seeking now to fulfil is to make sharp the 
ordinary presentment of the eminent characters 
I touch. I recall of Asa Gray, that with the 
class, he sat at his desk behind a substantial 
rail, which fenced him in from the boys in the 
front row, his seat a little raised and the notes 
before him made plain by a narrow light-well, 
which in the Holden of those days opened over 
the teacher's head to a sky-light in the roof. 
Gray's utterance was rather hesitant. He would 
catch for his word often, reiterating meanwhile 
the article, " the-a, the-a, the-a," his gaze mean- 
while fixed upon the sky-light, and a nervously 
gyrating forefinger raised high and brightly 
illuminated. The thought suggested was that he 
had a prompter on the roof to whom he was 
distressfully appealing to supply the true phrase. 
For Professor Gray the truth was in the top 
rather than the bottom of the well. Though 
sometimes long in coming it was the right thing 



Crax in tHe Class Room 279 

when it came and clothed his thought properly. 
Sizing up the new professor, in our first days 
with him, as boys will do, some unconscionable 
dogs in our front row, assuming an attitude 
which Abraham Lincoln afterward made classic, 
settled back in their chairs and rested their feet 
on the rail in front in a position higher than their 
heads. The professor, withdrawing his gaze sud- 
denly from the sky-light, found himself con- 
fronted not by expectant faces but by a row of 
battered and muddy boot-soles. His face fell; 
his whirling forefinger, ceasing to gyrate, tilted 
like a lance in rest at the obnoxious cowhide 
parapet. " Those boots, young gentlemen, ah, 
those boots''; he ejaculated forlornly, and the 
boots came down with mutinous clatter. Pro- 
fessor Gray soon established himself as a prime 
favourite among our lazy men, of whom there 
were too many. In calling us up he began with 
the A's, following down the class in alphabetic 
regularity. While Brooks was reciting, it was 
easy for Brown, sitting next, to open his book, 
and calculating narrowly the parallax, to hold 
it concealed below the rail, while he diligently 
conned the page following. In his turn he rose 
well-primed, and spouted glibly, and so on down 
the class. Rumour went that our childlike pro- 
fessor declared he had never known anything 
like it. Nearly every man got the perfect mark. 
This was a fiction. The professor's idea was 
that we were old enough to know what was good 



28o TKe Last Leaf 

for us, and ought to be above childish negligence 
and tricks. If some men saw no use in botany, 
he would not waste time in beating it into them. 
He left the blind and the sluggards in their 
wilful ignorance, but had generously helpful 
hands for all wiser ones who saw the value of 
trimming their lamps. All such he would take 
to his garden personally to direct and inspire, 
and our better men felt all through their lives 
how much that meant. In general we soon came 
to feel and appreciate a most kindly influence as 
proceeding from him. I think we had no teacher 
whom we at the last regarded more affection- 
ately or approached more closely; and many an 
indolent one was won to warm interest and 
diligence. 

Those were the days when the older science 
was rocking to its foundations in a re-shaping 
at the hands of new and brilliant men. Fara- 
day, we might have heard of, but Darwin, Hux- 
ley, Tyndall, and the rest, were names all 
unknown, as were also the revolutionary ideas, 
the conservation and correlation of forces, the 
substitution of evolution in the scheme of the 
universe for the plan of special creations. Here 
all unconsciously we were in contact with a man 
who was in the thick of the new scientific move- 
ment, the friend and partner in their strivings 
of the daring new interpreters of the ways of 
God to men, and who was to have recognition 
as a specially effective apostle of the new dis- 



The Light of Other Day-s 281 

pensation. Abraham himself entertained his 
angel no more unawares than we, but gleams 
of fine radiance sometimes broke through even 
to our purblind perceptions. Once unfurling a 
quite too long and heedless pair of ears to what 
I supposed would be a dull technical deliver- 
ance, I found myself suddenly caught and won- 
derfully stimulated. 

What [said Asa Gray] is the bright flame and vivid 
heat that is set free on your hearth when you kindle 
your piles of wood? It is the sunlight and sun- 
heat of a century ago. The beams were caught in 
the wilderness by the leaves of the trees; they were 
absorbed and stored in the trunks, and the light 
and heat day by day through many years was thus 
heaped up. When now combustion begins, it is 
simply a setting free of the radiance that was shed 
upon the forest many years ago. The noons of a 
time long past are making you comfortable in the 
wintry storm of the present. So when the an- 
thracite glows in your grate, you feel the veritable 
sunbeams that were emitted aeons upon aeons ago 
upon the primeval world. It is the very light that 
was drunk in by those most ancient forests. It was 
held fast in the trunks, and when those faithful 
reservoirs in their turn were crushed and com- 
mingled and drenched until at last they lay under 
the earth as the coal beds, they nevertheless held 
fast this treasure. When you scratch your match 
you but unlock the hoard, and the sunlight of 
primeval days, diminished by no particle, glows and 
warms once more. 



282 The Last Leaf 

This in substance was Asa Gray's introduction, 
from which he went on to explain that in the 
progress of the universe no faintest throb of 
energy is lost. It might pass from form to 
form; heat might appear as a mode of motion, 
of weight, of elasticity, but no smallest unit 
perished. So the lecture flowed on into a lumin- 
ous and comprehensive exposition of the great 
doctrine of the conservation and correlation of 
force. It was Asa Gray who brought us into 
touch with this new science just then announc- 
ing itself to the world. He was a co-worker and 
a compeer of the pioneers who at that moment 
were breaking a way for it, and it was our 
privilege to sit at the feet of a master. 

In later years his fame spread wide. He was 
recognised as the leader in America in his special 
field, and in a class with the best men of foreign 
lands. He was long a correspondent and special 
friend of Darwin, to the si)read of whose doc- 
trines he rendered great service. The fact that 
religiously he adhered to the time-honoured 
evangelical tenets helped much in the war which 
the new science was forced to wage with the 
odium theologicum. The new science, it must 
be said, perhaps has hardly yet made sure its 
footing. Are Natural Selection and Survival of 
the Fittest clews with which we can face con- 
fidently the workings of the " roaring-gloom that 
weaves for God the garment we see him by "? 
But no doctrine is better accepted than that in 



THe Coming of Louis 7\^assiz q9$ 

some way Evolution and not Special Creations 
is the scheme of the world. Toward this accept- 
ance Asa Gray helped powerfully, a champion 
always bold, humane, broad-minded. We used 
to laugh about the prompter he seemed to have 
at the top of the light-well in the sky-light in 
Holden Chapel. In a deeper sense than we 
knew the good man received his prompting from 
the clear upper sky. 

A naturalist who sixty years ago had, and 
perhaps still has, a much wider fame than Asa 
Gray was Louis Agassiz. He had come a few 
years before from Europe, a man in his prime, 
of great fame. He was strikingly handsome, 
with a dome-like head under flowing black locks, 
large dark, mobile eyes set in features strong 
and comely, and with a well-proportioned stal- 
wart frame. At the moment his prestige was 
greater, perhaps, than that of any other Harvard 
professor. His knowledge seemed almost bound- 
less. His glacial theory had put him among the 
geological chiefs, and as to animated nature he 
had ordered and systematised, from the lowest 
plant-forms up to the crown of creation, the 
human being. Abroad we knew he was held to 
be an adept in the most difficult fields and now 
in his new environment he was pushing his in- 
vestigations with passionate zeal. But the boys 
found in him points on which a laugh could be 
hung. As he strode homeward from his walks 
in the outer fields or marshes, we eyed him 



284 The Last Leaf 

gingerly, for who could tell what he might have 
in his pockets? Turtles, tadpoles, snakes, any 
old monster might be there, and queer stories 
prevailed of the menagerie which, hung up, and 
forgotten in the professor's dressing-room, crept 
out and sought asylum in the beds, shoes, and 
hats of the household. Before the resulting con- 
sternation, masculine and feminine, he was al- 
ways apologetic. He was on the friendliest terms 
with things ill-reputed, even abhorrent, and could 
not understand the qualms of the delicate. He 
was said to have held up once, in all innocence, 
before a class of school-girls a wriggling snake. 
The shrieks and confusion brought him to a sense 
of what he had done. He apologised elaborately, 
the foreign peculiarity he never lost running 
through his confusion. " Poor girls, I vill not 
do it again. Next time I vill bring in a nice, clean 
leetle feesh." Agassiz took no pleasure in shock- 
ing his class; on the contrary he was most anx- 
ious to engage and hold them. So too, if his 
audience was made up from people of the sim- 
plest. In fact, for each he exerted his powers 
as generously as when addressing a company of 
savants. He always kindled as he spoke, and 
with a marvellous magnetism communicated his 
glow to those who listened. I have seen him 
stand before his class holding in his hand the 
claw of a crustacean. In his earnestness it 
seemed to be for him the centre of the creation, 
and he made us all share his belief. Indeed, he 



Louis ^^assiz before an Avidience 285 

convinced us. Running back from it in an al- 
most infinite series was ,the many-ordered life 
adhering at last and scarcely distinguishable 
from the inorganic matter to which it clung. 
Forward from it again ran the series not less 
long and complicated which fulfilled itself at 
last in the brain and soul of man. What he 
held in his hand was a central link. His colour 
came and went, his eye danced and his tones 
grew deep and tremulous, as he dwelt on the 
illimitable chain of being. With a few strokes 
on the blackboard, he presented graphically the 
most intricate variations. He felt the sublimity 
of what he was contemplating, and we glowed 
with him from the contagion of his fervour. I 
have never heard his equal as an expounder of 
the deep things of nature. He gloried in the 
exercise of his power, though hampered by pov- 
erty. " I have no time to make money," he cried. 
He sought no title but that of teacher. To do 
anything else was only to misuse his gift. In 
his desk he was an inspirer, but hardly more so 
than in private talk. I recall walks we took with 
him to study natural objects and especially the 
striated rocks, which, as he had detected, bore 
plain evidence that the configuration of the re- 
gion had been shaped by glaciers. He was 
charmingly affable, encouraging our questions, 
and unwearied in his demonstration. " Pro- 
fessor," I said once, " you teach us that in crea- 
tion things rise from high to higher in the vast 



286 The Last Leaf 

series until at last we come to man. Why stop 
with man? why not conclude that as man sur- 
passes what went before, so he in turn will be 
surpassed and supplanted by a being still su- 
perior; — and so on and on?" I well recall the 
solemnity of his face as he replied that I was 
touching upon the deepest things, not to be dealt 
with in an afternoon ramble. He would only 
say then that there could be nothing higher than 
a man with his spirit. 

Whether Agassiz was as broad-minded as he 
was high-minded may be argued. The story ran 
that when the foundations of the Museum of 
Comparative Zoology were going on in Divinity 
Avenue, a theological professor encountering the 
scientist among the shadows the latter was in- 
vading, courteously bade him welcome. He 
hoped the old Divinity Hall would be a good 
neighbour to the pile rising oijposite. " Yes," 
was the bluff reply, " and I hope to see the time 
when it will be turned into a dormitory for my 
scientific students." They were quickly spoken, 
unmeditated words without intention of rudeness, 
but wrapped in his specialty he was rather care- 
less as to what he might shoulder out. Again, 
we had in our company a delicate, nervous fel- 
low who turned out to be a spiritualistic medium, 
and who was soon subjected to an investigation 
in which professors took part, which was cer- 
tainly rough and ready. Agassiz speedily came 
to the conclusion that the young man was an 



Alexander A^assiz . 287 

impostor and deseiTed no mercy. Some of us 
felt that the determination was hasty. There 
was a possibility of honest self-deception; and 
then who could say that the mysteries had been 
fathomed that involved the play of the psychic 
forces? Possibly a calmer and more candid 
mood might have befitted the investigation. At 
any rate in these later days such a mood has been 
maintained by inquirers like William James and 
the Society for Psychical Research. These are 
straws, but it is hardly a straw that when Dar- 
winism emerged upon the world, winning such 
speedy and almost universal adherence among 
scientific men and revolutionising in general the 
thought of the world as to the method of crea- 
tion, Agassiz stood almost solitary among au- 
thorities rejecting evolution and clinging to the 
doctrine of a special calling into being of each 
species. His stand against the new teaching was 
definite and bold, but can it be called broad- 
minded? This is but the limitation that makes 
human a greatness which the world regards with 
thorough and affectionate reverence. Fortunate 
are those in whose memories live the voice and 
countenance of Louis Agassiz. 

Those whose privilege it was to know both 
father and son will be slow to admit that the 
elder Agassiz was the greater man. Alexander 
(to his intimates he was always, affectionately, 
Alex), was a teacher only transiently, and I be- 
lieve never before a class showed the enkindling 



288 THe Last Leaf 

power which in the father was so marked a gift. 
His attainments, however, were probably not less 
great, and it remains to be seen whether his dis- 
coveries were not as epoch-making. He pos- 
sessed, moreover, a versatility which his father 
never showed (perhaps because he never took 
time to show it), standing as a brilliant figure 
among financiers and captains of industry. 
Finally, in a high sense, Alexander was a philan- 
thropist, and his benefactions were no more 
munificent than they were wisely applied; for 
he watched well his generous hand, guiding the 
flow into channels where it might most effec- 
tually revive and enrich. While possibly in the 
case of the elder Agassiz, the recognition of 
truth was sometimes unduly circumscribed, that 
could never be said of Alexander. He was 
eminently broad-minded, estimating with just 
candour whatever might be advanced in his own 
field, and outside of his field, entering with sym- 
pathetic interest into all that life might present. 

I recall him first on a day soon after our en- 
trance into college in 1851. A civic celebration 
was to take place in Boston, and the Harvard 
students were to march in the procession. That 
day I first heard Fair Harvard^ sonorously ren- 
dered by the band at the head of our column, 
as we formed on the Beacon Street mall before 
the State House. A boy of sixteen, dressed in 
gray, came down the steps to take his place in 
our class — a handsome fellow, brown-eyed, and 



A. Agassiz in College 289 

dark-haired, trimly built, and well-grown for his 
years. His face had a foreign air, and when he 
spoke a peculiarity marked his speech. This he 
never lost, but it was no imperfection. Rather 
it gave distinction to his otherwise perfect Eng- 
lish. In the years of our course, we met daily. 
He was a good general scholar but with a pre- 
ference from the first for natural science and 
mathematics. He matured into handsome man- 
hood, and as an athlete was among the best. 
He was a master of the oar, not dropping it on 
graduation, but long a familiar figure on the 
Charles. Here incidentally he left upon the 
University a curious and lasting mark. The 
crew one day were exercising bare-headed on 
the Back Bay, when encountering stress of 
weather, Agassiz was sent up into the city to 
find some proper head-gear. He presently re- 
turned with a package of handkerchiefs of crim- 
son, which so demonstrated their convenience 
and played a part on so many famous occasions, 
that crimson became the Harvard colour. 

Alexander was soon absorbed in the whirl of 
life, and to what purpose he worked I need not 
here detail. The story of the Calumet and 
Hecla Company is a kind of commercial romance 
which the harshest critics of American business 
life may read with pleasure. At the same time 
Agassiz was only partially and transiently a 
business-man, returning always with haste from 
the mine and the counting-room to the protracted 



290 THe Last Leaf 

scientific researclies in which his heart mainly 
lay. His voyages in the interest of science were 
many and long. He studied not so much the 
shores as the sea itself. Oceanographer is the 
term perhaps by which he may best be designated. 
By deep sea soundings he mapped the vast beds 
over which the waters roll and reached an in- 
timacy with the life of its most profound abysses. 
Sitting next him at a class dinner, an affair of 
dress-suits, baked meats, and cigars at the finish, 
I found his talk took one far away from the 
prose of the thing. He was charming in con- 
versation, and he set forth at length his theory 
as to the work of the coral insects, formed after 
long study of the barrier reefs and atolls of re- 
mote seas. His ideas were subversive of those 
of Darwin, with whom he disputed the matter 
before Darwin died. They are now well-known 
and I think accepted, though unfortunately he 
died before setting them forth in due order. 
They are revolutionary in their character as to 
the origin of formations that enter largely into 
the crust of the earth. In this field he stood 
as originator and chief. He gave me glimpses 
of the wonderful indeed, as we cracked our 
almonds and sipped the sherbet, his rich voice 
and slightly foreign accent running at my ear 
as we sat under the banquet lights. 

Though oceanography was his special field, his 
tastes and attainments were comprehensive and 
he was a man of repute in many ways. He was a 



His DreadtH of Mind 291 

trained and skilled engineer and mathematician, 
and an adept in the most various branches of 
natural science. At another class dinner, when 
I was so fortunate as to sit beside him, his in- 
terest in botany came out as he spoke of the 
enjoyment he took in surveying from the roof of 
the Museum of Comparative Zoology the trees 
of Cambridge, the masses of foliage here and 
there appearing from that point in special 
beauty. I spoke of the paper just read by 
Francis Darwin, the son of Charles, before the 
British Association, emphasising the idea that 
the life of plants and animals differs not in 
kind but only in degree. Plants may have 
memory, perhaps show passion, predatory in- 
stincts,, or rudimentary intelligence. The plant- 
world is therefore part and parcel of animated 
nature. Agassiz announced with real fervour 
his adherence to that belief and cited interesting 
facts in its support. Subtle links binding plant 
and animal reveal themselves everywhere to in- 
vestigation. In evolution from the primeval 
monads, or whatever starting-points there were, 
the fittest always survived as the outpoured life 
flowed abundantly along the million lines of de- 
velopment. There was a brotherhood between 
man and not only the zoophyte, but still further 
down, even with the ultimate cell in which organ- 
isation can first be traced, only faintly dis- 
tinguishable from the azoic rock on which it 
hangs. 



292 TKe Last Leaf 

As he talked I thought of the ample spaces 
of his Museum where the whole great scheme is 
made manifest to the eye, the structure of man, 
then the slow gradation downward, the immense 
series of flowers and plants counterfeited in 
glass continuing the line unbroken, down to the 
ultimate lichen, all but part and parcel of the 
ledge to which it clings. 

My tastes were not in the direction of mathe- 
matics or natural science, and it was not until 
our later years that we came into close touch. 
In the hospice of the Grimsel, in the heart of 
the Alps, as I sat down to dinner after a day 
of hard walking, I saw my classmate in a re- 
mote part of the room with his wife and children 
and a group of Swiss friends. I determined not 
to intrude, but as the dinner ended, coming from 
his place he sought me out. " I heard your 
voice," he said, " and knew you were here before 
I saw you." We chatted genially. That day, 
he said, he had visited the site of his father's 
hut on the Aar glacier, where the observations 
were made on which was based the glacial theory. 
On that visit he had, as a small boy, been car- 
ried up in a basket on the back of a guide. He 
had not been there since until that day. He 
was that night in the environment into which 
he had been born, and assumed toward me the 
attitude of a host making at home a stranger 
guest. To my question as to how a transient 
passer like myself could best see a great ice 



A. A^assiz in S-witzerland 293 

river, he replied, "Climb to-morrow the Aeggisch- 
horn, and look down from there upon the Aletsch 
glacier. You will have under your eye all the 
more interesting and important phenomena re- 
lating to the matter." We parted next morning. 
I had enjoyed a great privilege, for he was the 
man of all men to meet in such a place, — a feeling 
deepened a day or two later, when I looked down 
from the peak he had indicated upon this wide- 
stretching glacier below. 

As age drew on he mellowed well. Perhaps 
sympathy with men and things outside his special 
walk was no stronger than in earlier years, but 
it had readier expression. I heard from him this 
good story. President Eliot was once showing 
about the university a multimillionaire and his 
wife who had the good purpose to endow a great 
school of learning in the West. Having made 
the survey, they stood in Memorial Hall, about 
to say good-bye. " Well, Mr. Eliot," said the 
wife, " How much money have you invested? " 
Mr. Eliot stated to her the estimated value of 
the university assets. The lady turning to her 
husband, exclaimed, with a touch of the feeling 
that money will buy everything, " Oh, husband, 
we can do better than that." Said Mr. Eliot, 
with a wave of the hand toward the ancient por- 
traits on the walls : " Madame, we have one thing 
which money cannot buy, — nearly three centuries 
of devotedness ! " There is fine appreciation of 
a precious possession in this remark. In other 



294 THe Last Leaf 

ways Hansard may be surpassed. Other institu- 
tions may easily have more money, more stu- 
dents. As able men may be in other faculties, 
possibly (I will admit even this) there may be 
elsewhere better football. But that through 
eight generations there has been in the hearts 
of the best men, a constant all-absorbing devo- 
tion to the institution, is a thing for America 
unique, and which cannot be taken away. How 
stimulating is this to a noble loyalty in these 
later generations! The old college is a thing to 
be watchfully and tenderly shielded. As Alex- 
ander told me tlie story, I felt in his manner 
and intonation that the three centuries of de- 
votedness had had great influence with him. As 
John Harvard had been the first of the liberal 
givers, so he was the last, and I suppose the 
greatest. The money value of his gifts is very 
large, but who will put a value upon the labour, 
the watchfulness, the expert guidance exercised 
by such a man, unrequited and almost without 
intermission throughout a long life! His fine 
nature, no doubt, prompted the consecration, but 
the old devotedness spurred him to emulation 
of those who had gone before. 

In 1909 I enjoyed through Agassiz a great 
pleasure. He invited me to his house where I 
found gathered a company of his friends, many 
of them men of eminence. He had just returned 
from his journey in East Africa, during which 
he had penetrated far into the interior, studying 



i\. A.£;assiz at Home 295 

with his usual diligence the natural history 
of the regions. He entertained us with an in- 
formal talk beautifully and profusely illustrated 
by photographs. I have said that he did not 
possess, or at any rate, never showed his father's 
power of kindling speech. So far as I know he 
never addressed large popular audiences. Never- 
theless to a circle of scientific specialists, or peo- 
ple intelligent in a general way, he could present 
a subject charmingly, in clear, calm, fluent 
speech. On this occasion he was at his best, and 
it was a pleasure indeed to have the marvels of 
that freshly-opened land described to us by the 
man who of all men perhaps was best able to 
cope with the story. I listened with delight and 
awe. He was an old man crowned with the 
highest distinctions. I thought of the young 
handsome boy I had seen coming down in his 
grey suit into the Beacon Street mall, while the 
band played Fair Harvard. On the threshold I 
shook his hand and looked into his dark, kindly 
eyes. I turned away in the darkness and saw 
him no more. 



CHAPTER X 

AT HAPHAZARD 

IN 1887, in pleasant June weather I left St. 
Louis with my family on the capacious river- 
packet Saint Paul, for a trip up-stream to the 
city for which the boat was named. The flood 
was at the full as we ploughed on, stopping at 
landings on either side, the reaches between 
presenting long perspectives of summer beauty. 
We paused in due course at a little Iowa town, 
and among the passengers who took the boat 
here were two men who excited our attention 
at the landing. One was a tall handsome fellow 
in early manhood, well-dressed and mannered, 
completely blind. The other was his companion, 
a rather dishevelled figure with neglected beard 
and hair setting off a face that looked out some- 
what helplessly into a world strange to it, an 
attire of loose white wool, plainly made by some 
tailor who knew nothing of recent fashion-plates. 
A close-fitting cap of the same material sur- 
mounted his head. The attire was whole and 
neat, but the air of the man was slouchy and 
bespoke one who must have lately come from 

296 



Mr. William Grey 297 

the outskirts into the life of America. The young 
blindman at once aroused earnest sympathy. Of 
the other some one remarked, " Plainly a globe- 
trotting Englishman, who has lost his Baedeker 
and by chance got in here." 

Presently the boat was on its way, and as I 
sat facing the changing scene, I heard a shuf- 
fling, hesitating step behind, and a drawling 
somewhat uncertain voice asked me about the 
country. I replied that it was my first trip and 
I was ignorant. Turning full upon the querist, 
no other than the globe-trotter, I said: "You 
are an Englishman I see. I was in England last 
year. I have spent some time in London, and 
I know other parts of your country." A con- 
versation followed which soon became to me in- 
teresting. My companion had education and 
intelligence, and before the afternoon ended we 
were agreeably in touch. He handed me his 
card on which was engraved the name, " Mr. 
William Grey." I told him I was a Harvard 
man, a professor in Washington University, St. 
Louis. He was of Exeter College, Oxford, and 
for some years had been a professor in Codring- 
ton College, Barbadoes, in the West Indies, 
whence he had lately come. To my natural sur- 
prise that he should be so far astray, he said 
he had been visiting a fellow Exeter man, a 
clergyman of the English Church, who was the 
rector of an Iowa parish. It further developed 
that his young blind companion belonged to a 



298 THe Last Leaf 

family in the parish, and that Mr. Grey had 
good-heartedly assumed the care of him during 
an outing on the river. 

A trip from St. Louis to St. Paul by river is 
longer now than a trip across the Atlantic. I 
was nearly a week in my new companionship, 
and acquaintance grew and deepened fast. The 
young blindman, whose manners were agreeable, 
became a general favourite, and Mr. Grey and 
I found we had much in common. I mentioned 
to him that my errand in England the year be- 
fore had been to find material for a life of Young 
Sir Henry Vane, the statesman and martyr of 
the English Commonwealth, and in his young 
days a governor of the province of Massachusetts 
Bay. This touched in him a responsive chord. 
He was familiar with the period and the char- 
acter. He was a friend of Shorthouse whose 
novel, John Inglesant was a widely-read book of 
those days. He had helped Shorthouse in his 
researches for the book, and knew well the story 
of Charles I., and his friends and foes. He was 
himself a staunch Churchman, but mentioned 
with some pleasure that his name appeared 
among the Non-conformists. A sturdy noble of 
those days was Lord Grey of Groby, who op- 
posed the King to the last, standing at the right 
hand of the redoubtable Colonel Pride at the 
famous " Pride's Purge," pointing out to him 
the Presbyterians Avhom the Ironside was to 
turn out of Parliament, in the thick of the 



Sir George Grey 299 

crisis. To my inquiry as to whether Lord Grey 
of Groby was an ancestor, he was reticent, 
merely saying that the name was the same. T 
had begun to surmise that my new friend was 
allied with the Greys who in so many periods 
of English history have borne a famous part. 
Some years before, while sojourning in a little 
town on the Ohio River, a stroll carried me to 
a coal-mine in the neighbourhood. As I peered 
down two hundred feet into the dark shaft, a 
bluff, peremptory voice called to me to look out 
for my head. I drew back in time to escape 
the cage as it descended with a group of miners 
from a higher plane to the lower deeps. I 
thanked my bluff friend, who had saved my 
head from a bump. A pleasant acquaintance 
followed which led to his taking me down into 
the mine, a thrilling experience. He was an 
adventurous Englishman who had put money 
into a far-away enterprise, and come with his 
wife and children to take care of it. His wife 
was a lady well-born, a sister of Sir George Grey, 
twice governor of New Zealand, and at the time 
High Commissioner and governor of Cape 
Colony, one of the most interesting of the great 
English nation-makers of the South Seas. I 
came to know the lady, and naturally followed 
the career of her brother, who earned a noble 
reputation. Later I corresponded with him, and 
received from him his portrait and books. Re- 
ferring to Sir George Grey in my talk with Mr. 



300 TKe Last Leaf 

William Grey, I found that he knew him well, 
and not long before, in a voyage of which he 
had made many into many seas, had visited New 
Zealand, and been a guest of Sir George Grey 
at his island-home in the harbour of Auckland. 
Was he related to Sir George? was my natural 
query. Again there was reticence. The name 
was the same, but the Greys were numerous. 

The journey wore on. The resource of the 
steamer's company was to sit on the upper deck, 
watch the swollen river with its waifs of up- 
rooted trees and the banks green with the 
summer, chatting ourselves into intimacy. The 
young blindman made good and very good, and 
his guardian, while keeping a lookout on his 
charge from under his well-worn traveller's cap, 
which I now knew had sheltered its owner in 
tropic hurricanes and icy Arctic blasts, discussed 
with me matters various and widely related. 
Nearing our journey's end, we sat in the moon- 
light, the Mississippi opening placidly before us 
between hazy hills. We had grown to be chums, 
and next morning we were to part. It was a 
time for confidences. " Well," said Mr. Grey, 
" I am going to get a good look at America, 
then I mean to return home and go into Par- 
liament." I suggested there might be diflftculties 
about that. English elections were uncertain, 
and how could he be at all sure that any con- 
stituency would want him. " Ah," said he, this 
time no longer reticent. " I am going into the 



XHe Earl of Stamford 301 

House of Lords." " Indeed," said I in surprise, 
" and who are you really, Mr. William Grey? " 
At last he was outspoken. He was heir to the 
earldom of Stamford, his uncle the present earl, 
a man past eighty, childless, and in infirm health, 
must soon lay down the title. He was preparing 
himself for the responsibilities of the high posi- 
tion and believed it well to make a study of 
America. His father, a younger son, had been a 
clergyman in Canada, and he, though with an 
Oxford training, knew the world outside of 
England better than the old home. His direct 
ancestor was Lord Grey of Groby, whose father, 
an earl of Stamford, had been a Parliamentary 
commander in the years of the Civil War, and 
in the century before that, a flower of the house 
had been the Lady Jane Grey, who had perished 
in her youth on the scaffold, a possible heir to 
the English crown. So this outre personage, 
good-heartedly helping the blindman to an out- 
ing, and in a shy apologetic way getting into 
touch with an environment strange to him, was 
a high-born nobleman fitting himself for his 
dignities. 

I had before invited Mr. Grey to visit me in 
St. Louis, for his seeming helplessness appealed 
to me from the first. He had met some hard 
rebuffs in his American contacts. I thought I 
might aid him in making his way. Returning 
in the autumn to my home, I heard from Mr. 
Grey that he was coming to be my guest, and 



302 THe Last Leaf 

in due time he arrived. I missed him at the 
station, but he presently appeared at our door, 
in an express-waggon, sitting on the seat with 
the driver, in the midst of his belongings. He 
spent a week with us in the first American home 
he had known, and we found him an amiable 
and unobtrusive gentleman. He was a vigorous 
walker and explored the city well. His listless, 
seemingly inattentive eyes somehow scanned 
everything, and he judged well wiiat he wit- 
nessed. He was an accomplished scholar and 
had a quiet humour. A little daughter half- 
playfully and half-wilfully, announced her in- 
tention to follow her own pleasure in a certain 
case. " Milicent is a Hedonist," said the guest, 
and the Oxford scholar brought Aristippus and 
Epicurus into odd conjunction with a Mississippi 
Valley breakfast-table. He laid aside his white 
woollen suit, but his attire remained unconven- 
tional, not to say outre. Even the wrinkled 
dress-suit in which he appeared at dinner, I 
think was the achievement of a tailor in the 
island of Barbadoes. His opera-hat was a 
wonder. He was, or was soon to be, a belted 
earl, but his belt only appeared on his pajamas, 
raiment of which I heard then for the first time. 
It had early appeared in our intercourse that 
the main interest of Mr. Grey lay in humane 
and religious work. He also was a devoted 
member of the Church of England. On Sunday 
morning we started early for the leading Epis- 



A Hi^H-Dorn Humanitarian 303 

copal Church but on the way he inquired as to 
the place of worship of the negro congregation 
of that faith. I confessed my ignorance of it, 
but he had in some way ascertained it, and I 
presently found myself following his lead down 
a rather squalid street where at last we came 
to the humble temple. Instead of hearing the 
bishop, a famous and eloquent man, he pre- 
ferred to sit on a bare bench in the obscure little 
meeting-house, wliere he fraternised cordially 
with the dusky company we found there. He 
was more interested in our charities than in our 
politics and business, and in his quiet way dur- 
ing the week learned the story well. I intro- 
duced him to Southern friends who gave him 
letters to persons in the South. Provided with 
these he bade us good-bye at last, and went far 
and wide through what had been the Confed- 
eracy. He visited Jefferson Davis and many 
soldiers and politicians of note, getting at first- 
hand their point of view. I also gave him let- 
ters to some eminent men in the East, which he 
presented, meeting with a good reception. He 
made a wide and shrewd study of the United 
States, and I am glad to think I helped him. 
When I met him he was unfriended and without 
credentials, and his singularities were exposing 
him to some inconvenient jostling in our rough 
world. I opened some doors to him through 
which he pushed his way into much that was 
best worth seeing in American life. An old 



304 The Last Leaf 

friend, a radical man of letters, wrote me after- 
wards that he enjoyed Mr. Grey, and he thought 
Mr. Grey enjoyed him although he believed that 
if he had been a pauper, a criminal, or even a 
bishop, Mr. Grey would have enjoyed him much 
more. 

He returned to England and did not forget 
me, writing from time to time how his affairs 
progressed. Soon he entered into his own, the 
earldom of Stamford, finding about the same 
time his countess in an English vicarage. In 
the House of Lords he was not prominent, 
though the papers occasionally mentioned brief 
addresses by him. His main interest con- 
tinued to be charitable work. He was a lay- 
preacher, and worked much in the east end of 
London, throwing the weight of his culture and 
high position into alleviating ignorance and pov- 
erty. He sent me interesting literature relating 
to the efforts of well-placed men and women to 
carry into slums and hovels sweetness and light. 
In due time a daughter was born to him, whom 
he named Jane Grey; and later a son. Lord 
Grey of Groby. I saw once in the London 
Graphic, or perhaps in the Illustrated News, 
charming pictures of these children with their 
interesting historic names. Though rigidly a 
Churchman he was not narrow. Lord Stamford 
sent me a handsome picture of himself, to which 
is affixed his signature as an earl and an ela- 
borate seal. In an accompanying note he wrote 



An Honoxarable Line 305 

that the seal was a careful facsimile of the one 
which an ancestor of his had affixed to the death- 
warrant of Charles I. He seemed to take pride 
in the fact that his forbear had borne a part in 
the ancient Non-conformist strivings. He came 
to America more than once afterward, as a dele- 
gate to charitable and peace Congresses. My 
dear friend Robert Treat Paine, President of the 
Peace Society and eminent philanthropist of 
Boston, knew him well and esteemed him highly 
— and he was the fellow of workers like him. 

It is a picturesque moment in my life that I 
in this .way came into association with a noble- 
man of the bluest blood. To outward appear- 
ance as I stumbled upon him so unexpectedly, he 
seemed effete. His odd shuffle and limp whiskers 
were dundrearily suggestive of a personality a 
bit mildewed. But I felt that what ineptitude 
there was, was only superficial; good, strong 
manhood lay underneath. His death took place 
some years since. 

Burke's Peerage states that the family was 
ennobled by Richard Coeur de Lion, and has 
maintained itself in a high place for eight cen- 
turies. Privilege is a bough of the social tree 
from which we expect mere dead sea-fruit rather 
than a wholesome yield, but now and then the 
product holds something better than ashes. As 
we trace this stock through the ages, apples of 
Sodom, no doubt, will be found in abundance, 
but now and then it flowers into heroic man- 



3o6 THe Last Leaf 

hood and lovely womanhood. My chance com- 
rade of the St. Paul was a refined, high-purposed 
man, certainly a product of the worthier kind, 
and I am glad to count among my friends, 
William Grey, Ninth Earl of Stamford. 

As a student of German, anxious to gain 
fluency of expression, and to train my ear to 
catch readily tlie popular idioms, I found that 
I must fill out my writing and reading by con- 
tact with men. After roving the streets of 
German cities, I packed a knapsack and set out 
upon the country-roads. I was, as the Germans 
say, gut zu Fuss, a stout walker, and I learned 
to employ for my longer expeditions the Bummeh 
Zug, an institution I commend highlj^ to all in 
my situation. The Bummel-Zug is simply a 
" way " freight-train, to which in my time was 
attached a car for third-class passengers. It 
stopped at every village, and the fare was very 
low. It was convenient, therefore, for those too 
poor to be in a hurry, and for travellers like me 
whose purpose could be better served by loitering 
than by haste. The train proceeded leisurely, 
giving ample time for deliberate survey of the 
land, and the frequent pauses of indefinite 
length afforded opportunity for walks through 
the ^streets of remote hamlets and even into the 
country about, where the peasants with true 
Teuton Gemuthlichkeit always welcomed a man 
who came from America. 



A Franciscan Friar 307 

Thus on my legs and by Bummel-Zug I wan- 
dered far, arriving one pleasant day at the 
ancient city of Salzburg, close to the Bavarian 
Alps. I was anxious to see something of the 
Tyrol, and had been told that the Konigs-See 
offered the finest and most characteristic scenery 
of that region. Salzburg was a suitable point 
of departure. The sky darkened and it began 
to rain heavily. Berchtesgaden, in the moun- 
tains, the nearest village to the Konigs-See, was 
only to be reached by Eihoagen, a modification 
of the diligence, which forty years ago still held 
its place on the Alpine roads. I stood at the 
door of the inn, observing the company who 
were to be my fellow-passengers. There were 
two or three from the outside world, like my- 
self, a few mountaineers with suggestions of the 
Tyrol in their garb, and one figure in a high 
degree picturesque, a Franciscan friar in guise 
as mediaeval as possible. His coarse, brown robe 
wrapped him from head to foot. A knotted cord 
bound his waist, the ends depending toward the 
pavement and swinging with his rosary. His 
feet were shod with sandals, and his head was 
bare, though an ample cowl was at hand to 
shelter it. His head needed no tonsure for age 
had made him nearly bald. His shaven face 
was kind and strong and he was in genial touch 
with the by-standers, to whom no doubt such a 
figure was not novel. Incongruously enough, the 
friar held over his head in the pouring rain a 



308 TKe Last Leaf 

modern umbrella, his only concession to the 
storm and to modernity. Presently we climbed 
in for the journey, and I was a trifle taken aback 
when the monk by chance followed me directly, 
and as we settled into our seats was my close 
vis-a-vis. As we bumped along the rough road 
our legs became dove-tailed together, I as well 
as he wrapped in the coarse folds of his monkish 
robe, the rosary as convenient to my hand as to 
his, and as the vehicle swayed our heads dodged 
each other as we rocked back and forth. Thrown 
thus, as it were into the embrace of the past, 
I made the most of it and got as far as might 
be into the mediaeval. I found my friar charm- 
ingly companionable. His Bavarian patois was 
not easy to follow, nor could he catch readily 
the speech I had been learning in the schools. 
But we made shift and had much talk as we 
drove through the storm into the highlands. He 
was a brother in the monastery at Salzburg, but 
being out of » health, was making his way to a 
hospice of his order above the valley. He had 
heard of America, and knew there were houses 
of his order in that strange land. He was doubt- 
ful of its location, and possibly an American was 
a creature with whom he had never till then 
been in touch. Under the scrutiny of his mild 
eyes I was being studied as a queer outlandish 
specimen, as he certainly was to me. We parted 
at last as good friends, his head now enveloped 
in the cowl, his sandals pattering off in the dusk 



THe Watzmann 309 

toward the little cell that awaited him in the 
hospice, while I sought a place by the fire in 
the inn of Berchtesgaden. I learned afterward 
that he was well known and much venerated in 
Salzburg. 

I came into the mountain-nook oddly com- 
panioned, and my exit thence was equally so, 
though greatly in contrast. For a day or two 
I was storm-bound, and felt the depression 
natural in a remote solitude, wrapped in by 
rain and fog, with no society but an unintelli- 
gible mountaineer or two. At last it cleared 
and the revulsion was inspiring. I found my- 
self in a little green vale hemmed in by magni- 
ficent heights whose rocky summits were covered 
with freshly-fallen snow. Close at hand rose the 
Watzmann, a soaring pyramid whose summit 
was cleft into two sharp peaks inclined into 
some semblance of a bishop's mitre. My recent 
association with the monk had made vivid the 
thought of the old church, and it seemed fitting 
that there should be lifted high in air such a 
symbol of the domination under which the region 
lay. But my Protestant eyes regarded it cheer- 
fully, glad to have within range an object so 
picturesque. I forthwith strapped on my knap- 
sack, buckled my belt, and strode out for the 
Konigs-See, which lay not far beyond. I walked 
briskly for a mile or two, stimulated by the 
abounding oxygen of the highland air, but pre- 
sently found myself where the road forked and 



310 TKe Last Leaf 

there was nothing to indicate which was my 
right path. The solitude seemed complete, but 
as I stood hesitating, I was relieved by the ap- 
pearance of a pedestrian who emerged from a 
by-way. As I framed an inquiry I was deterred 
by a certain augustness in the stranger. I had 
rarely seen a man of finer bearing. His stature 
was commanding, his figure, even in the rough, 
loose walking-dress he wore, was full of sym- 
metry. His elastic step showed vigour, and his 
face under his broad-brimmed Tyrolese hat had 
much manly beauty. Was he perhaps a prince 
in disguise? His friendly salutation, given in deep 
masculine tones with a good-natured smile, put 
me at ease as I told him my strait. He said in 
good German, which I was glad once more to 
hear after my experience of the mountain patois, 
that he was on the way to the Konigs-See, that 
he knew the road, "^ and we would walk on to- 
gether. I accommodated myself to his stride 
and we settled into a pace which carried us 
rapidly toward our goal, meanwhile talking 
cheerfully. I had found it usually a good pass- 
port to say I was an American and I withheld 
nothing as to my antecedents and my present 
errand in Germany. He was more reticent. He 
lived in Prussia and was at the moment taking 
an outing. His affability did not go the length 
of revealing his true character. If he were a 
high personage incognito, I was not to know it. 
We reached at last the shore of the Konigs- 



TKe Mysterioxis Stranger 311 

See, a blue, deep lake at a high elevation, en- 
circled by lofty peaks, splintered, storm-beaten, 
and capped by snow which never melts, far above 
the range of grass and trees. A group of women 
on the beach had ready two or three broad and 
rudely-built boats, and noisily clamoured for our 
patronage. We chose what seemed the best, and 
the women rowers with stout arms soon propelled 
us far from shore into the midst of the Alpine 
sublimity. A silence fell, broken only by the 
oar-beats. Then, where the precipices rose high- 
est we paused. Suddenly a gun was fired. It 
broke upon the silence startlingly loud, and after 
an interval the report reverberated in a series 
of crashes from height after height, dying down 
into a dull murmur from the steep most distant. 
I was awed by the sight and the sound, and 
awed too, by my companion. He had thrown 
off his hat and knapsack and stood with his fine 
stature at the bow. His classic face was turned 
upward to the peaks, and with a look as if he 
felt their power. He waved his arms toward 
them as if in a salutation to things sentient. 
The man seemed to befit the environment, 
majestic though it was. 

We returned sooner than we desired from our 
excursion on the water, the boat-women being 
over eager for new passengers. My companion 
resumed his knapsack and it was time to part. 
To his question as to my plan I replied that I 
was there simply for the scenery, that I purposed 



312 TKe Last Leaf 

to make my way back to Salzburg on foot by 
the paths that promised most, and should be 
guided by whatever I might learn. He said that 
he, too, was bound for Salzburg, walking for 
pleasure; and when I thereupon suggested that 
we might go on together, he readily fell in, and 
we trudged forward. Comradeship grew strong 
as the day passed, then a night in an unfre- 
quented inn, then another day. We discussed 
things near and far, ancient and recent, I talk- 
ing most but he was always genial and quietly 
responsive, and my confidence was invited. I told 
him of the little fresh-water college in the West 
with which I was associated, my functions be- 
ing partly pedagogic and partly pastoral, of the 
embarrassments of co-education as we found 
them, the diflftculty in the uplift of too frivolous 
youth to a high moral and spiritual plane, the 
embarrassment in curbing characters too reck- 
less into decorum and propriety. He listened 
sympathetically, with no discoverable cynicism 
in the rather grave smile he usually wore. As 
to whom he might be, he remained constantly 
reticent, though my curiosity increased as the 
hours flew. We passed not far from two or three 
mountain resorts, where tourists were gathered. 
Near such my companion showed some nervous- 
ness. There might be people there who knew 
him, and it suited him for the time to remain 
by himself. This I took as some small confirma- 
tion of my suspicion that he was a great per- 



A. Garden in Salzburg 313 

sonage. Physically certainly he was superbly 
endowed. The roads were rough and often 
steep, and I found the tramp fatiguing; but 
when I asked if he, too, were not tired, he 
laughed at the idea, tossing his burden or taking 
an extra climb as fresh as at the start. At night 
our cots were in the same room. As he stripped 
off his shirt and stood with head pillared upon 
a most stately neck, and massive, well-moulded 
chest and shoulders, he was statuesque indeed. 

At last Salzburg came in sight. Though we 
had become quite intimate I had made no pro- 
gress in penetrating to my comrade's true char- 
acter. I had laid many an innocent little trap 
to induce him to speak more openly, but no 
slip on his part ever betrayed him. We entered 
the city and sat down together at a table in a 
public garden, near the castle of the old Bishops 
of Salzburg, ordering for each a glass of light 
wine, the parting-cup. Already, since our en- 
trance into the city things had occurred which 
partly confirmed the theory I had formed as to 
the distinction of my comrade, and also aroused 
in my mind doubts not quite comfortable. He 
was an object of interest in the well-dressed 
crowd. That he was a conspicuously handsome 
man in a measure explained that, but there were 
signs, too, that some recognised him as a person 
well-known. When we were seated in the garden 
actual acquaintances began to appear, agile 
athletic young men, who were deferential but 



314 THe Last Leaf 

familiar. There were ladies, too, modest enough, 
but certainly unconventional, nimble free-footed 
beings, with featliers and ribbons streaming 
airily as they flitted. These, like the men, were 
deferential to my comrade, yet familiar. There 
seemed to be a renewing of some old tie that 
all were glad to reconnect. The young men were 
actively demonstrative, the ladies wove in and 
out smilingly, and my comrade in the midst 
beamed and grew voluble. Was it an environ- 
ment into which a quiet American college func- 
tionary could properly fit? No due bounds were 
transgressed, but the atmosphere was certainly 
very Bohemian. My prince incognito, was he 
perhaps the Prince of Pilsen? While this happy 
mingling was going forward I sat somewhat 
aloof, disconcerted that my cloud-capped towers 
and gorgeous palaces were thus crumbling into 
comic opera. But now my comrade approached 
me, aglow with social excitement, and, with a 
franker look in his eyes than he had before 
shown, addressed me : " Mein lieber Herr Pro- 
fessor, we have had a good ramble together and 
talked about many things. You have been con- 
fidential with me, and hoped that I would be 
with you. I have preferred to hold back, but now 
as we part I ought to tell you who I am. I 
am the premier danseur in the ballet of the 
Royal Opera House in Berlin. Worn with the 
heavy work in Fantasca, whicli we produced 
elaborately and which ran long, I came down 



A. Qvieer Denouement 315 

here when the season closed, for change and 
rest, and so fell in with you. These young 
Herren and Damen are the coryphes and figur- 
antes, who in Berlin or in other cities have taken 
part with me in productions. Good people they 
are and unsurpassed as a corps de ballet.^' 
We -touched glasses, shook hands, and I went 
my way leaving Comus with his rout, guileless, 
I hope, as Milton's innocent " Lady," but such 
scales never fell from her starry eyes as fell 
from mine. I knew well about Fantasca. Dur- 
ing my last weeks in Berlin it had been much 
talked about, a splendid theatrical spectacle put 
on with consummate art, and lavish expendi- 
ture. I had not seen it. Heredity from eight 
Puritan generations reinforced by impecuniosity 
had kept me from that. But I had heard of the 
wonderful visions of beauty and grace. My 
handsome comrade of the Bavarian Alps had 
been at the centre of it all, the god Apollo, or 
whatever glittering divinity or genius it was 
that swayed the enchantments and led in the 
rhythmic circlings. Good cause indeed I had 
had to admire his physical beauty. He had been 
picked out for that no doubt among thousands, 
then painfully trained for years until in figure 
and frame he was a model. 

The gay pleasure garden in which we had 
parted lay close to a gloomy monastic structure, 
centuries old, that from a height dominated the 
little town. The garden and the structure were 



3i6 The Last Leaf 

symbols of what was most salient in that coun- 
try — the ancient church braced against progress, 
with its power broken in no way, and on the 
other hand of a life interpenetrated with things 
graceful and refined, with art, music, and poetry, 
but seamed, too, with frivolity and what makes 
for the pleasures of sense. My two friends also 
were in their way types, — the cowled Franciscan, 
aloof in a mediaeval seclusion though he breathed 
nineteenth-century air, and the dancer whom I 
encountered in the vale, above which the Watz- 
mann upholds forever its solemn mitre. But 
they were good fellows both, my comrade in and 
my comrade out. The monk's heart was not too 
shrivelled to flow with human kindness, and the 
dancer had not unlearned in the glare of the 
foot-lights the graces of a gentleman. 

I profess to be a man of peace. Through 
training, environment, and calling I ought to 
be so, and yet there is a fibre in my make-up 
which has always throbbed strangely to the 
drum. Is it perhaps a streak of heredity? In 
almost every noteworthy war since the founda- 
tion of the country, men of my line have borne 
a part. I count ancestors who stood among the 
minute-men at Concord bridge. Another was in 
the redoubt at Bunker Hill. In the earlier time 
two great-great-grandfathers went out against 
Montcalm and were good soldiers in the Old 
French War. Still earlier a progenitor, whose 



Old Battlefields 3^7 

name I bear, faced the Indian peril in King 
Philip's War, and was among the slain in the 
gloomy Sudbury fight. Perhaps it is a trace 
from these ancient forbears still lingering in my 
blood that will respond when the trumpets blow, 
however I strive to repress it, and it has given 
me qualms. 

I was not easy in mind when I stood on the 
tower of St. Stephen's Church, in Vienna more 
than forty years ago, to find that what I sought 
most eagerly in the superb landscape was not 
the steep Kahlenberg, not the plumy woods of 
Schonbrunn, not the Danube pouring grandly 
eastward, nor the picturesque city at my feet; 
but the little hamlets just outside the suburbs, 
and the wide-stretching grain-field close by, turn- 
ing yellow under the July sun, where Napoleon 
fought the battles of Aspern and Wagram. Nor 
was I quite easy when I set out to climb the 
St. Gotthard Pass, to find that although the 
valley below Airolo was so green with fertile pas- 
ture, and from the glaciers above me the heavens 
were pricked so boldly by the splintered peaks, I 
was thinking most where it was precisely that 
old Suwarrow dug the grave and threatened to 
bury himself, when his army refused to follow 
him; then how he must have looked when he 
had subdued them, riding forward in his sheep- 
skin, or whatever rude Russian dress he wore, 
this uncouth hero who needed no scratching to 
be proved Tartar, while his loving host pressed 



3i8 TKe Last Leaf 

after him into every death-yielding terror that 
man or nature could throw across his path. 

That I had good reason for my uneasiness, on 
second thoughts, I do not believe. Nor do I 
believe it is just for you, high-toned friend, to 
censure me as somewhat low and brutal, when 
I confess that of all one can see in Europe, 
nothing thrilled me quite so much as the great 
historic battle-fields. Nothing deserves so to in- 
terest man as man himself ; and what spots, after 
all, are so closely and nobly connected with man 
as the spots where he has fought? That we are 
what we are, indeed that we are at all, — that 
any race is what it is or is at all, — was settled 
on certain great fields of decision to which we 
as well as every race can point back. And then 
nothing absorbs us like a spectacle of pain and 
pathos! Tragedy enchants, while it shocks. 
The field of battle is tragedy the most shock- 
ing; is it doing indignity to our puzzling nature 
to say it is tragedy most absorbing? And there 
is another side. Once at midnight, in the liglit 
of our bivouac-fire, our captain told us in low 
tones that next day we were to go into battle. 
He was a rude fellow, but the word or two he 
spoke to us was about duty. And I well re- 
member what the men said, as we looked by the 
fire-light to see if the rifles were in order. They 
would go into fire because duty said, " Save the 
country!" and when, soon after, the steeply- 
sloping angle of the enemy's works came into 



Places of Tragic Interest 319 

view, ominously red in the morning light, and 
crowned with smoke and fire, while the air 
hummed about our ears as if swarming with 
angry bees, and this one and that one fell, there 
was scarcely one who, as he pulled his cap close 
down and pushed ahead in the skirmish-line, was 
not thinking of duty. They were boys from 
farm and factory, not greatly better, to say the 
most, than their fellows anywhere; and we may 
be sure that thought of duty has always much 
to do with the going forward of weaponed men 
amongst the weapons. Men do fight, no doubt, 
from mere recklessness, from hope of plunder or 
glory; and sometimes they have been scourged 
to it. But more often, where one in four or five 
is likely to fall, the nobler motive is uppermost 
with men and felt with burning earnestness too, 
which only the breath of the near-at-hand death 
can fan up. No ! there is reason enough why 
battle-fields should be, as they are, places of pil- 
grimage. The remoteness of the struggle hardly 
diminishes the interest with which we visit the 
scene; Marathon is as sacred as if the Greeks 
conquered there last year. Nor, on the other 
hand, do we need poetic haze from a century or 
two of intervening time: Gettysburg was a con- 
secrated spot to all the world before its dead 
were buried. There need be no charm of nature ; 
there are tracts of mere sand in dreary Branden- 
burg, where old Frederick, with Prussia in his 
hand, supple and tough as if plaited into a nation 



320 The Last Leaf 

out of whip-cord, scourged the world; and these 
tracts are precious. On the other hand, the 
grandest natural features seem almost dwarfed 
and paltry beside this overmastering interest. 
On the top of the Grimsel Pass there is a melan- 
choly, lonely lake which touches the spirit as 
much as the Rhone glacier close by, or the soar- 
ing Finster-Aarhorn, the Todten See (Sea of the 
Dead), beneath whose waters are buried soldiers 
who fell in battle there on the Alpine crags. 
Had I defined all this, I need not have felt 
uneasy on St. Stephen's spire or the St. Got- 
thard. We are not necessarily brutal if our feet 
turn with especial willingness toward battle- 
fields. There man is most in earnest; his sense 
of duty perhaps at its best; the sacrifice great- 
est, for it is life. Theirs are the most momen- 
tous decisions for weal or woe; theirs the 
tragedy beyond all other tremendous and solemn. 
It is right that the sacrifice they have witnessed 
should possess an alchemy to make their acres 
golden. 

The humane, and I hope I may be counted 
among the number, have long wished that some 
milder arbitrament than that of arms might in- 
tervene to settle the disagreements of men. No 
such arbitrament has as yet come into being. 
We settle our disputes in this way, and history 
must record the struggles, however reluctantly. 
As an historical writer, it has been my function 
to deal with times of conflict in various periods 



Writing abovit the Civil War 321 

and lands. When I was seventy years old I 
began writing a history of our Civil War. To 
have at hand the literature of the period I went 
to Washington, where the most kind officials of 
the Library of Congress assigned to me a roomy 
alcove in the north curtain with a desk and 
ample surrounding shelves. These were filled 
for me by expert hands with whatever I might 
require for my task, and a screen shut off my 
corner from the corridor through which at times 
perambulated Roosevelt, and other secluded 
delvers, intent on early Gaelic literature and 
what not. Here I spent the most of two years, 
finding it an ideal spot, but my task required 
more than an examination, under the quiet light 
of my great window, of books and documents. 
The fields themselves must also be surveyed, so 
I travelled far until I had visited the scene of 
nearly every important confiict and traced the 
lines of march in the great campaigns. I was 
already a haunter of old battle-fields, that thread 
of heredity, from a line of forbears very martial 
in their humble way, asserting itself in what- 
ever lands I wandered. I had been at Hastings, 
and had traced the Ironsides to Marston Moor 
and Naseby. I had stood by the Schweden- 
Stein at Liitzen, and tramped the sod of Leipsic 
and Waterloo. It was for me now to see our 
own fields of decision, fields ennobled by a 
courage as great and a purpose as high as 
soldiers have ever shown. 



322 XKe Last Leaf 

To mark Waterloo the Belgians reared a 
mound of huge dimensions, scraping the terrain 
far and near to obtain the earth. Wellington 
is said to have remarked that the features of 
the ground had been so far obliterated by this 
that he could not recognise his own positions. 
One wonders whether the future may not blame 
our generation for transformations almost as 
disguising. Gettysburg, Chickamauga, Vicks- 
burg, and Shiloh are now elaborate parks. No 
mounds have been reared, but the old roads are 
smooth boulevards, trim lawns are on the ragged 
heights, the landscape-gardener has barbered the 
grim rough face of the country-side into some- 
thing very handsome no doubt, but the imagina- 
tion must be set to work to call back the arena 
as it was on the battle-day. From various points 
of vantage memorials make appeal, statues, obe- 
lisks, Greek temples, and porches, bewildering 
in their number, and now and then making 
doubtful claims. " This general," some scru- 
tiniser will tell you, " never held the line as- 
cribed to him and that pompous pile falsely 
does honour to troops who really wavered in 
the crisis." I know I run counter to prevailing 
sentiment in saying that I prefer a field un- 
changed, not with features blurred by an over- 
laying of ornamental and commemorative ac- 
cretions. A few markers of the simplest, and a 
plain tablet now and then where a hero fell or 
valour was unusually conspicuous, should sufl&ce, 



On tKe TracK of tHe Armies 323 

for a field is more impressive that lies for the most 
part in its original rudeness and solitude. At 
Antietam I found little obtrusive. Sherman's 
fields on the way to and about Atlanta have not 
been marred; nor at Franklin and Nashville are 
the plains parked and obelisked out of recog- 
nition. At Bull Run I climbed with a veteran 
of the signal-service into the top of a high tree, 
an old war-time station, on the hill near the 
Henry House. The precarious platform re- 
mained. From such an eyrie in the same grove, 
perhaps from this same tree, a Southern friend 
of mine, on the battle-day, caught sight more 
than two leagues away of the glint of sunlight 
on cannon and bayonets toward Sudley Springs, 
and sent timely notice to Beauregard that a 
Federal column was turning his left. Under 
my eye the landscape was unchanged, with no 
smoothings or intrusions to embarrass the im- 
agination in making the scene real. But it was 
in the Wilderness that I felt especially grateful 
that the wild thickets for the most part had been 
let alone. I found at Fredericksburg an old 
Confederate, one of Mahone's command, and 
hiring an excellent roadster, we drove on a per- 
fect autumn day first to Spottsylvania Court 
House, then across country to the Brock road, 
then home by the Wilderness church and Chan- 
cellorsville. On the area we traversed were 
fought four of our most memorable battles, an 
area now scarcely less tangled and lonely than 



334 XKe Last Leaf 

when the Federals poured across the Rappa- 
hannock into its thickets by the thousand, and 
were so memorably met. My veteran knew the 
pikes and the by-paths, and we fraternised with 
the warmth usual among foemen who at last 
have become friends. He knew the story well 
of every wood-path and cross-roads. Certainly 
I was glad that the rugged acres had undergone 
no " improvement," and that the eye fell so 
nearly on what the old-time soldiers saw. It so 
happened it was election-day. There were poll- 
ing-places at the court-houses of Fredericksburg 
and Spottsylvania, at Todd's Tavern, and the 
Chancellor house, names bearing solemn associa- 
tions. The neighbourhoods had come out to vote, 
and introduced by my comrade, I had some inter- 
esting encounters. It was a good climax, when 
toward the end, near the Chancellor House, we 
met in the road a patriarchal figure, white- 
bearded and sturdy, on his way home from the 
polls. It was old Talley, whose log-house, in 
1862, was the point from which Stonewall Jack- 
son began his sudden rush upon Hooker's right. 
Talley, then a young farmer, had walked at the 
General's stirrup pointing out the way. He had 
interesting things to tell of Stonewall Jackson 
at that moment when his career culminated. 
" What did he seem like? " I queried. " He was 
as cool and business-like as an old farmer look- 
ing after his fences." On an old battle-field 
which had been illustrated by an achievement 



TKe Graves of Lee and S, JacKson 325 

of the Stonewall division especially brilliant, I 
chanced, to meet a grey veteran who had taken 
part in it, a North Carolinian who had come 
back to review the scene. We fraternised, of 
course. " What did Stonewall Jackson look 
like? " I said. Stepping close to me, the " Tar- 
heel " extended his two gnarled forefingers, and 
pressed between the tips my cheek-bones on 
either side. " He had the broadest face across 
here I ever saw," he said. Such a physiogno- 
mical trait is perhaps indicative of power of 
brain and will, but I do not recall it among the 
usual descriptions of Jackson. 

Naturally, after surveying much Virginia 
country once war-swept, as I came to the head 
of the Shenandoah Valley, I could not miss a 
visit to Lexington, where repose in honoured 
graves two such protagonists as Lee and Stone- 
wall Jackson. It is a beautiful town among low 
mountains green to the summit, and in the 
streets not a few lovely homes of the Virginia 
colonial type, draped with ivy and wisteria. 
There stand the buildings of Washington and 
Lee University, in the chapel of which lies buried 
Robert E. Lee, and a short mile beyond is the 
Virginia Military Institute, from which Stone- 
wall Jackson went forth to his fame. The 
memorial at Jackson's grave is appropriate, a 
figure in bronze, rugged as he was in face and 
attire, the image of him as he fought and fell. 
Different, but more impressive is the memorial 



326 THe Last Leaf 

of Lee. You enter through the chapel where 
the students gather daily, then passing the 
chancel, stand in a mausoleum, where nobly 
conceived in marble the soldier lies as if asleep. 
He bears his symbols as champion in chief of 
the " Lost Cause," but the light on his face is not 
that of battle. It is serene, benignant, at peace. 
I was deeply moved as I stood before it, but 
soon after I was to experience a deeper thrill. 
The afternoon was waning when I walked on to 
the Military Institute. Stonewall Jackson had 
been for ten years a teacher there. The turf 
of the parade I was crossing had perhaps felt 
no footfall more often than his. Two or three 
hundred pupils, the flower of Virginia youth, 
were assembled in battalion, and I witnessed 
from a favourable point their almost perfect 
drill. As the sun was about to set, they formed 
in a far-extending line, with each piece at 
present. They w^ere saluting the flag, which 
now began slowly to descend from its staff. 
Lo, it was the flag of the Union. The band 
played, I thought, with unusual sweetness, the 
Star-SjMngled Banner, and to the music those 
picked youths of the South, sons and grandsons 
of the upholders of the right to sever, did all 
possible honour, on the sod which Stonewall 
eTackson trod, hard by the grave of Lee, to the 
symbol of a country united, states now and here- 
after in a brotherhood not to be broken ! It was 
a scene to evoke tears of deep emotion, for never 



Mis^viidecl CKaxnpions 327 

before or since has it come home to me so power- 
fully that the Union had been preserved. 

Closing as I do now my record of memories, 
I feel that the most momentous of the crises 
through which it has been my lot to pass is that 
attending the maintenance of the Federal bond 
in the United States. Assemblies of veterans of 
the Confederacy and those who address them 
scout the idea that they fought to preserve negro 
bondage. A late historian of our Civil War, 
Professor Paxon, of Wisconsin, holds it to be 
" reasonably certain " that in another generation 
slavery would have disappeared of itself, a con- 
tention surely open to dispute. Here I neither 
dispute nor approve, but only say, if the claim 
can be made good, what a vindication would it 
constitute of men, who looked for the quiet dying 
out of an inveterate evil, deprecating passionate 
attack upon a thing moribund? And what an 
indictment of the John Browns, whose im- 
patient consciences pressed for instant aboli- 
tion careless of whatever cataclysm it might 
involve! Certainly the two prime champions 
whose graves I saw at Lexington did not fight 
to sustain slavery. Their principle was that a 
State could not be coerced, — and that therefore 
sovereignty lay in the scattered constituents and 
not at the centre. The arbitrament of the 
sword was sharp and swift, and happily for the 
world it went against them. I well recall the 
map of Germany I studied when a boy, a page 



3*8 THe Last Leaf 

blotched and seamed with bewildering spots of 
colour. The effort was to portray the position 
of some three hundred independent political 
units, duchies, principalities, bishoprics, free 
cities, and what not, among electorates and 
kingdoms of a larger sort, but still minute. It 
seemed like a pathological chart presenting a 
face broken out with an unseemly tetter. The 
land indeed, in those days, was afflicted by a 
sad political disease. The Germans call it 
" Particularismus " or ^^Vielstaaterei/' the break- 
ing up of a nationality into a mass of fragments. 
Some on the map were scarcely larger than pin- 
heads, and in actual area hardly exceeded a 
fair-sized farm. In that time Heine laughed at 
one of them after this fashion, while describing 
a journey over it in bad weather: 

" Of Biickeburg's principality 

Full half on my boots I carried. 
Such muddy roads I 've never beheld 
Since here in the world I 've tarried." 

The consequences of this disintegration were 
disastrous to the dignity of Germany and the 
character of her people. She had no place 
among the real powers of the world politically, 
and her masses, lacking the stimulus of a noble 
national atmosphere, were dwarfed and shrivelled 
into narrow and timid provincialism, split as 
they were into their little segregations. Patriot- 



Hvils of Disintegration 329 

ism languished in dot-like States oppressively 
administered, without associations to awaken 
pride, or generous interests to evoke devotion. 
Spirits like Lessing and Goethe, all but derided 
patriotism. It scarcely held a place among the 
proper virtues. The small units were forever 
unsympathetic and inharmonious, jealous over 
a petty " balance of power " and always liable 
to war. The disease which the face of the map 
suggested to the boy's imagination was indeed 
a real one, inveterate, deep-seated, and prostrat- 
ing to all that is best in human nature. For a 
few years, before the adoption of the Constitu- 
tion, America seemed likely to fall a prey to it, 
each of the thirteen States standing aloof on its 
own little dignity in a bond scarcely more than 
nominal, of the weakest and coolest. In 1787 
came the beneficent change. The thirteen and 
those that followed the thirteen were made one, 
and it was the beginning of a grand unifying 
in many lands. Following an instinct at first 
only faintly manifest but which soon gathered 
strength, disintegrated Germany became one. 
Italy, too, became one, and in our old home the 
" Little Englanders," once a noteworthy com- 
pany, succumbed to a conquering sentiment that 
England should become a " great world- Venice," 
and the seas no longer barriers, but the high- 
ways, through which the parent-state and her 
brood of dominions, though flung far into many 
zones, should yet go easily to and fro, not 



330 XKe L.ast I^eaf 

separate nations, nor yet a company bound to- 
gether by a mere rope of sand, but one. Great 
nations replaced little states. 

Had the South prevailed in the Civil War, 
there would have been a distinct and calamitous 
set-back in the world movement. It would have 
been a reaction toward particularism, and how 
far might it not have gone? Into what granula- 
tions might not our society have crumbled? The 
South's principle once recognised, there could 
have been no valid or lasting tie between States. 
Counties even might have assumed to nullify, 
and towns to stand apart sufficient unto them- 
selves. When the thing was doubtful with us, 
the North by no means escaped the infection. 
The New York City of Fernando Wood con- 
templated isolation not only from the Union but 
from the State of which it was a part. Had 
the spirit then so rife really prevailed, the map 
of America to-day might have been no less 
blotched with the morbid tetter of particularism 
than that of the Germany of sixty years ago. 
Centralisation may no doubt go too far, but in 
the other extreme may lie the gravest danger, 
and rushing thitherward the South was blind to 
the risk. I stood with all reverence by the 
graves of the two great men at Lexington. Per- 
haps no Americans have been in their way more 
able, forceful, and really high-purposed. But 
they were misguided, and their perverted swords 
all but brought to pass for us and the future the 



Exipeptic Mxjsin^s 331 

profoundest calamity. I am proud to have been 
in the generation that fought them down, believing 
that upholding the country was doing a service 
to the world. I think of that lofty sentence 
inscribed upon the memorial of Goldwin Smith 
at Ithaca, " Above all nations is Humanity." 
Patriotism is not the highest of virtues. It is 
indeed a vice if it limits the sympathies to a 
part. Love for the whole is the sovereign vir- 
tue, and the patriotism is unworthy which is 
not subordinate to this, recognising that its 
only fitting work is to lead up to a love which 
embraces all. 

And now I toss the " Last Leaf " on my prob- 
ably over-large accumulation of printed pages. 
What I have set down is in no way an auto- 
biography. It is simply the presentment of the 
panorama of nearly fourscore momentous years 
as unrolled before one pair of eyes. Whether 
the eyes have served their owner well or ill the 
gentle reader will Judge. I hope I have not 
obtruded myself unduly, and that I may be par- 
doned as I close, if I am for a moment personal. 
My eyes have given me notice that they have 
done work enough and I do not blame them for 
insisting upon rest. As to organs in general I 
have scarcely known that I had any. They have 
maintained such peace among themselves, and 
been so quiet and deferential as they have per- 
formed their functions that I have taken no 
note of them, having rarely experienced serious 



332 TKe I^ast L.eaf 

illness. Had ^Esop possessed my anatomy, 
he would have had small data for inditing his 
fable as to the discord between the " Members " 
and their commissariat, and the long generations 
might have lacked that famous incentive to har- 
mony and co-operation. I venture to say this in 
explanation of my stubborn optimism, which is 
due much less to any tranquil philosophy I may 
have imbibed than to my inveterate eupepsia. 
My optimism has not decreased as I have grown 
old, and I record here as the last word, my faith 
that the world grows better. I recall with vivid- 
ness nineteen Presidential campaigns, and be- 
lieve that in no one has the outlook been so 
hopeful as now. ISTever have the leaders at the 
fore in all parties been more able and high- 
minded. I have purposed in this book to speak 
of the dead and not the living. Were it in 
place for me to speak of men who are still 
strivers, I could give good reason, derived from 
personal touch, for the faith I put in men whose 
names now resound. However the nation moves, 
strong and good hands will receive it, and it 
will survive and make its way. Agitation, the 
meeting of crises, the anxious application of 
expedients to threatening dangers, — these we 
are in the midst of, we always have been and 
always shall be. Turmoil is a condition of life, 
beneficently so, for through turmoil comes the 
education that leads man on and up. We en- 
counter shocks that will seem seismic. But it 



£-upeptic Musings 333 

will only be the settling of society to firmer 
bases of justice. In our confusions England is 
our fellow, but a better world is shaping there, 
though in the earthquake crash of old strata so 
much seems to totter. And farther east in 
France, Germany, and Russia are better things, 
and signs of still better. Levant and Orient 
rock with violence, but they are rocking to hap- 
pier and humaner order. What greater miracle 
than the coming to the front among nations of 
Japan ! Will her people perhaps distance their 
western teachers and models. Shall we re- 
verse the poet's line to read " Better fifty years 
of China than a cycle of the West? " Society 
proceeds toward betterment, and not catastrophe, 
as individuals may proceed on stepping-stones of 
their dead selves to higher things. The troubles 
of the child, the broken toy, the slight from a 
friend, the failure of an expected holiday, are 
mole-hills to be sure, but in his circumscribed 
horizon they take an Alpine magnitude. His 
strength for climbing is in the gristle, nor has 
he philosophy to console him when blocked by 
the inevitable. When the child becomes a man 
his troubles are larger, but to surmount them 
he has an increment of spiritual vigour, which 
should swell with passing years. He lives in 
vain who fails to learn to bear and forbear 
serenely. For human society, and for the indi- 
viduals that compose it, the happy time lies not 
behind but before, and I invite the gentle reader 



334 TKe I^ast L-eaf 

to accept with me the wise and kind thought of 
Rabbi Ben Ezra, now growing trite on the lips 
of men because we feel it to be true: 

" Grow old along with me. 

The best is yet to be, — 
The last of life for which the first was made. 

Our times are in His hand 

Who saitli a whole is planned. 
Youth shows but half. Trust God; see all; 

Nor be afraid." 



INDEX 



Agassiz, Alexander, in college, 287; leads to the adoption 
of crimson as the Harvard colour, 289; as captain of 
industry, 289; as scientist, 290; as philanthropist, 293 

Agassiz, Louis, in 1851, 283; as scientist and teacher, 284; 
his strength and limitations, 287 

Alcott, A. Bronson, at Concord, 249 

Alcott, Louisa M., in young womanhood, 237; as writer for 
children, 238 

Andrew, John A., Governor of Massachusetts, 22; his 
speech to the selectmen, 24 

Antioch College, in the sixties, 67; dramatics at, 71 

B 

Bancroft, George, at Berlin, 162; his love for roses, 165; 

at Washington, 166 ; as a historical path-breaker, 167 
Banks, N. P., a pathetic figure, his rise and fall, 38 
Barlow, Francis C, in college, 57; as a soldier, 61; after 

the war, 65 
Bartlett, W. F., as a soldier, 54 
Battle-fields, as places of interest, 316 
Berlin, in 1870, 110 
Brooks, Phillips, as a youth, 255; in comic opera, 257; at 

the Harvard Commemoration. 260; his breadth of 

spirit, 261 ; at Lowell's funeral, 262 
Bryce, James, his home in London, 194 
Buffalo, in 1840, 1 

Bunsen, the chemist, at Heidelberg, 266 
Butler, B. F., at New Orleans, 41 

335 



336 Index 



Churchill, Lord Randolph, 198 

Churchill, Winston, 200 

Clark, James B., of Mississippi, 54 

Concord, the town of, 233 

Cox, Jacob D., 34 

Curtius, Ernst, at Berlin, 206 



Dancer, the, at the Konigs-See, 310; at Salzburg, 313 
Douglas, Stephen A., in his prime, 6; supports Lincoln in 

1861, 8 
Dramatics, at Antioch College, 71; in the schools of Eng- 
land, 80; in the schools of France, 76; in the schools 
of Germany, 72 



E 



Eliot, President C. W., as an oarsman, 223 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, in his prime, 246; his hospitality, 

248; and Walt Whitman, 250; in old age, 253 
Eupeptic musings, 332 
Everett, Edward, his conservatism, 16; as an off-hand 

speaker, 17 



P 



Fillmore, Millard, as a friend, 2; signs the Fugitive Slave 

Bill, 3; effects of the measure, 3; his home-life, 4; 

with Lincoln at church, 5 
Fiske, John, in youth, 168; and Mary Hemenway, 169; the 

" Extension of Infancy," 170; his love for music, 174; 

in social life, 175; at Petersham, 178 
France, in war-time, 151 
Francis Joseph, the Emperor, 141 
Franciscan, the, at Salzburg, 307 



Index 337 

Frederick, the Emperor, 139 

Frederick the Great, his statue, 110; his sepulchre, 131 

Freeman, Edward A., in America, 185; at Somerleaze, 186 

G 

Gardiner, Samuel R., in London, 181 ; at Bromley, 183 

Garnett, Sir Richard, at the British Museum, 179 

Germany, in 1870, 108 

Gladstone, W. E., in 1886, 200 

Goethe and Schiller, their graves, 129 

Grant, U. S., his greatest conquest, 28 

Gray, Asa, in the Botanic Garden, 278; in the classroom, 

279; as a lecturer, 281; his services to science, 282 
Grenadier, the young, of Potsdam, 144; of Weimar, 145 
Grey, Mr. William, see Stamford. 
Grimm, the brothers, their graves, 128 
Grimm, Hermann, at Berlin, 212 



Harrison, W. H., the campaign of 1840, 1 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, at Concord, 239; at Brook Farm, 

240; as a ghost-seer, 242; as literary artist, 243 
Heidelberg, in 1870, 204 
Helmholtz, the scientist, at Heidelberg, 268 
Hohenzollern, the line of, 132 
Hollis, 8; at Harvard, 161 
Holmes, O. W., as an oarsman, 223; his versatility and 

wit, 224; his deeper moods, 226 
Home-life, in Germany in 1870, 124 
Howard, 0. 0., at Gettysburg, 47 

K 

Kirchoff, the physicist, at Heidelberg, 265 

L 
Lepsius, the Egyptologist, 209 

22 



338 Index 

Lexington, Va., graves of R. E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson 
at, 325 

Lincoln, Abraham, at church, 5 

Longfellow, H. W., in 1851, 218; the incubation of Hia- 
watha, 225; memorial service for, 221 

Lowell, Charles R., as a soldier, 55 

Lowell, James Russell, in his prime, 227 ; his Yankee story, 
227; his Commemoration Ode, 229; his funeral, 232 

Ludwig, King of Bavaria, 143 

Luther, Martin, his grave at Wittemberg, 130 

M 

Mann, Horace, as an inspirer, 67 

Meade, George G., at the Harvard Commemoration, 29 

Militarism, in Germany, 111 

Mommsen, Theodor, at Berlin, 209 

Munich, in 1870, 148 

Museum, the Royal, at Berlin, 121 

N 

New Wrinkle at Sweetbrier, 71 

Newcomb, Simon, as a youth, 271; his parentage, 272; as 

an astronomer, 274; his last years, 276 
Norman, Sir Henry, 197 



Paris, in war-time, 152 

Parliament, in 1886, 195 

Pope, John, a pathetic figure, 42 

R 

Ranke, Leopold von, 207 

S 

Saxton, Rufus, at Port Royal, S. C, 48 
Schenkel, Daniel, 211 
Schools, in Russia, 116 



Index 339 

Sedan, The debacle at, 159 

Seward, William H,, his Plymouth oration, 13; his too 

careless cigar, 14; the Alaska purchase, 15 
Sheridan, Philip H., 28 
Sherman, T. W., at Port Royal, S. C, 50 
Sherman, W. T., in private life, 30; at dinner with, 31; 

and John Fiske, 32; his funeral, 34 
Slocum, Henry W., and Samuel J. May, 45 
Smith, Goldwin, at Niagara, 191; his memorial stone at 

Cornell, 192 
Stamford, the Earl of, encountered on the Mississippi, 

296; as a household guest, 301; a high-born philan- 
thropist, 304 
Stevens, Isaac I., 52 
Sumner, Charles, his fine presence, 18; as a youth, 19; a 

conversation with, 21; and John A. Andrew, 24; his 

strength and weakness, 26 
Switzerland, in 1870, 150 



Taft, W. H., in boyhood, 34 
Thoreau, Henry D., in his early time, 235 
" Tippecanoe and Tyler too," 2 
Treitschke, von, at Heidelberg, 205 

U 

Uhlan, the young, of Erfurt, 145 

Union, value of its triumph in the Civil War, 327 

Universities, of Germany, in 1870, 119 



Victoria, Crown Princess of Prussia, 139 

W 

Webster, Daniel, his last speech in Faneuil Hall, 10; his 
"big way," 11; his "Liberty and Union, now and 
forever," 12 



340 Index 

Weimar, the young grenadier of, 145 

West Pointers and civilians in the Civil War, 33 

Whitman, Walt, and Emerson, 250 

Wilhelm der Grosse, Kaiser, 138 

Wilhelm II., Kaiser, 139 

Wilson, James H., 49 

Winsor, Justin, as youth and man, 167 

Winthrop, Robert C, his ability and conservatism, 17; as 

master of the feast, 18 
Wright, H. G., 57 



A Selection from the 
Catalogue of 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 



Complete Catalogue sent 
on application 



The Letters of 

Ulysses S. Grant 

Edited by his Nephew, Jesse Grant Cramer 

8°. With Portraits. $1.75 net. By mail, $1.90 

In this volume have been gathered together 
the letters that Grant wrote to his father and 
his youngest sister during the anxious months 
preceding the Civil War and during the stren- 
uous years of campaigning. It is a human 
document of rare value, — a revelation of char- 
acter as well as a record of military achieve- 
ment. One gathers from repeated statements 
that Grant in the beginning believed that the 
struggle would be of brief duration. His 
fervent loyalty and profound conviction of 
the justice of the cause he was defending, the 
total absence of consideration of self, the un- 
quenchable energy of the man, and his modest 
bearing, — these are the qualities with which 
the letters are most strongly infused; but the 
book is interesting from many other points of 
view as well. It reveals the fact that Grant's 
ability grew with the responsibilities that were 
placed upon him. 

G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York London 



"One of the most captivating and useful 
books of memoirs of recent years." — Daily Mail. 



Recollections of a Parisian 

(Dr. Poumite de la Siboutie) 

Under Six Sovereigns, Two Revolutions, and a Republic 
1789-1863 

Translated by 

Lady Theodora Davidson 

Octavo. $S.OO net. By mail, $S.2S 

" Paris, sullen, poverty-stricken, discontented; Paris 
intoxicated by the enthusiasm for a great leader ; Paris 
under defeat and plague ; Paris deceiving herself into a 
false gaiety ; Paris, in a hundred moods, palpitates 
with life in these pages . . . the events have never 
been described with greater reality." 

Manchester Courier. 

"He met nearly every one worth knowing in the Paris 
of his day, and the book teems with little character 
sketches illustrated by stories ; indeed, the book is full 
of good stories, well told. Dr. Poumi^s de la Siboutie's 
entertaining recollections should prove a valuable help 
to the study of the period in which he lived all the 
more so as they are untainted by any trace of personal 
ill-will or party prejudice." — ShefBeld Telegraph. 



G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York London 



Abraham Lincoln 

The People's Leader in the Struggle for National 
Ejdstence 



By George Haven Putnam, Litt.D. 

Author of " Books and Their Makers in the Middle Ages," " The 
Censorship of the Church," etc. 

With frontispiece reproduced in photogravure 
from the portrait by Marshall. 

Crown 800. $1.25 net. (By mail, $I.^O) 

The monograph presents the main events in the career 
of the people's leader. The development of Lincoln's 
character and the growth of his powers from boyhood 
through his work at the Bar, and as a leader in the political 
contests that preceded the war for the restriction of slavery, 
and his final service to the comitry as War President and 
commander-in-chief of its forces, are recorded in outline, 
but with such measure of comprehensiveness as serves to 
make the picture and record practically complete. 

From Robert T, Uncoin * 

" I shall preserve this volume as one of themosttreasured 
of those relating to my father. . . . Your narrative is full 
of interest and of freshness and I have read it throughout 
with tiie greatest pleasure." 

From the New York Sun 

" An admirable piece of work that constitutas a distinctive 
addition to the increasing mass of Lincoln literature." 

From the Qeveland Leader 

" A comprehensive study of the life and character of 
Lincoln, presented in a direct and attractive manner, and 
with decided charm of style. . . . One of the most valuable 
books that has yet been brought into print concerning 
the great Captain." 

New York G. P. Putnam's Sons London 



Biographies of Note 



The Life of 

George Borrow 

G>mplled (lom Unpublished Official Documents. His Works, 
Correspondence, etc. 

By Herbert Jenkins 

8yo. 13 lUustratioas. S3. 50 act (By mail, 53. 7S) 

The only adequate and complete biography of the 
remarkable ** gypsy," philologist, and traveller. The 
author has had access to the most valuable material 
and it is believed that this may be regarded as the 
definitive life of the author of " Lavengro." 

The Early Court of 
Queen Victoria 

By Clare Jerrold 

6vo. 17 Illusttations. S3. 75 net; by mail, S4.00 
An intimate and entertaining account of the upbring- 
ing, accession, and early reign of Victoria and of the his- 
toric figures that administered at her Court functions. 
The author pays attention to the Queen's domestic life 
and her participation in the affairs of state. 

The Comedy of 
Catherine the Great 

By Francis Gribble 

Author of " The Romantic Life of Shelly/* etc. 

6vo. With 6 Photogravure Illusttations. S3.75 net 

{By mail, $4.00) 

An account of the shameless Empress of Russia, 

whose indelicacy was conspicuous even in her age of 

easy morals. 



New York G. P. Putnam's Sons Loodon 



DEC 6 1912 



